Not All Shells are Hollow
by TrigramCyborg
Summary: When Ghost joined the Task Force, he was little more than a shell of the man he once was. Hollow, heartless, numb: He accepted this as his reality. Little did he know that some people have a way of filling that void. (GhostXSoap, Slash)
1. A Shaky Introduction

The day that Simon Riley was recruited for the Task Force 141 was a quiet day. There was no celebration for him, hardly even a congrats was offered by the man in charge of this Task Force, General Shepherd. Instead, he quietly arrived at the base at Credenhill. From what he gathered, the force was going on roughly 85 operators and was split between two Captains. He was coming in to meet his possible new Commanding Officer. Just an interview, no need for concern.

At least, that's what he wanted to believe. Despite the relaxed nature of the base, his stomach practically twisted upon itself. Back in his days of the SAS, Simon heard tale of Captain Price; he was infamous for his high risk decisions - impulsive and yet too effective to call out. He'd heard from the General just what Price did in the days long conflict with the Ultra Nationalists earlier this year. This man was probably ready to dig in his head in search of any weakness. Probably was looking for a stone faced rock like every other special service officer out there. Probably a man on his waning years of service...

That was all Simon could think in: probabilities.

When he reached the door, he shook his head and took a slow, deep breath. _Just an interview._ With that, he knocked.

"'s open," a gruff, decidedly Scottish voice said on the other side.

Simon opened the door and stood there in minor shock as he gawked at the stranger inside. The man was only slightly shorter than he was, but you probably wouldn't notice with the stupid mohawk he had. Beyond that, all Simon could tell was that this man was young, way too young to be a Captain. A Lieutenant, easily, but definitely not a Captain. This guy had to be just running paperwork over from somewhere else.

"Simon Riley, I presume?" The stranger asked, effectively snapping him back to attention.

"Yes, sir. That'd be me. And you are?"

He smiled. "I'm Captain John MacTavish. How about you have a seat and we can get this interview under way."

Okay, so this man, who simply couldn't be much older than 25, really was a Captain. Simon nodded and pulled one of the two chairs against the wall.

The Captain sat at his desk as well and flipped through a few pages. While he did so, Simon caught sight of lengthy notes scrawled in the margin, small print and yet a touch messy. Once MacTavish found what he was looking for, he looked up at him. "You're a strange case, Lt. Riley. I've got a couple conflicting reports on you. Care to shed some light on this?"

Simon bit the inside of his lip. His luck this man chose to get at one of the harder questions. If there was a conflicting report, then that meant that he somehow dug up his old records. Part of his delay in coming to this interview was in General Shepherd clearing up the messier parts of his papers. For all intents and purposes, his record was supposed to be a clean slate. Either the General decided to entrust the knowledge of his old records to him, or MacTavish must have done _a lot_ of digging. Already a bad sign. "I've got a bumpy history."

With a slow nod, MacTavish turned his stare back down to the files in hand. "'Bumpy' seems like a bit of an understatement, don't ya think?"

"..." Years of training allowed Simon to keep his outward composure, yet inside he was sure he couldn't feel any sicker. "Yes, sir, it is."

"Even after four months away on recovery, they hadn't let you back in the S.A.S. Said you'd been seeing a therapist for some time and she prescribed a sleep aid. Have you been taking it?"

This was a trick question. Either answer was a flag, could even disqualify him from joining. "No, sir, I hadn't. When she suggested it, the original problem hadn't been bothering me for some time."

"She also described you as having temper management issues, would that be an accurate assessment?"

"Well it's _an_ assessment," Simon replied. "But yes, at the time, it was accurate."

Captain MacTavish set down the papers. He flatly repeated, "At the time." With a sigh, he folded his hands on his desk. "Alright. Same time I got this report, General Shepherd handed me one vouching for your skill and effectiveness, siting that you single handedly took down of a drug cartel by the name of Roba."

"That'd be correct."

"In other words, you feel you're fit for service in an elite task force, in spite of earlier issues," MacTavish summed up.

"Yes, sir," Simon said.

"I'm going to be honest with you, Lieutenant, I'm not sold on the idea of having a potentially rogue element. The conflicting reports alone are reason enough for me not to accept you," the Captain states. "But, seeing as you have the General's vote of confidence, I'm going to give you a chance. You go see a therapist in the next week, and we can look at what their assessment of your mental health is. If they say you have an issue that needs some form of medication, you can take that to a different person and get a second opinion. If they both agree that you should be on something, you're going to go along with it. Am I understood?"

If he ended up needing medication, then there was no way that he'd be allowed. "Crystal. I take it if they do put me on something, you're dismissing me?"

MacTavish acquired an almost devilish smirk. "Not exactly."

The answer stunned Simon as he stared at the Captain. _I_ _s he out of his head?_ "Sir...?"

"At the end of the day, I get it, Lieutenant. I've seen some shit too, and when I got back here, nobody was sure if I was fit for service either. It isn't easy, but I'd rather you take care of yourself than ignore what could be a serious issue."

"This is against regulation, sir..."

"So's the General erasing details from your records," MacTavish remarked. "If he wants to bend rules, then I'm sure he'll turn a blind eye if we bend a few ourselves."

-()-()-()-

That night, when Simon returned to his apartment, he threw his pillow at the wall in frustration. "That fucking bastard!" His conversation with Captain MacTavish remained fresh in his mind. He stared at the pillow on the floor, seething still.

 _How? How could that man be willing to go against rules so easily? How could anyone like that be a suitable captain?_

He grabbed the pillow and pushed it down onto his bed before finally lying down and glaring at the ceiling. He shouldn't have been surprised. Wanker had a mohawk for Christ's sake. That's breaking one for sure. He probably broke about a dozen others and didn't even think twice about it.

And yet it wasn't just his willingness to break rules that ate at Simon. No... The last thing the 'good' Captain said before he left was just as enraging:  
 _"Seems like General Shepherd mentioned you having a callsign. Ghost? I'm sure there's gotta be an interesting story behind that one."_

Interesting story... Try life time trauma.

It'd only been a single meeting, but Simon kept finding more and more things he hated about this Captain with each time he went over their interview. The laundry list of grievances bordered on excessive at this point. Maybe he wouldn't be so angry if it had been Captain Price who interviewed him. He could respect that man's authority, and the rule bending wouldn't seem so out of line for a man of his reputation. All of it boiled down to one thing though, the worst of Captain MacTavish's offenses: He tried to humanize him.

-()-()-()-

A week passed before Simon returned to the Captain with his now up to date mental health record.

Surprise, surprise, both therapists decided that he still had temper issues. Oddly though, there wasn't any medication that they prescribed to him, only that he find a suitable outlet for his stress. He'd been convinced that they would saddle him with at least one antidepressant or something.

The report seemed to be just as surprising for MacTavish as well, if the slight arc to his brow was any indication. He put the paper down after a moment of reading. "Well then, that settles that. Congratulations, welcome to the 141."

 _It was that easy? It shouldn't have been that easy!_ Simon tried to maintain a stoic expression. "Thank you, sir." He knew he should have just left it at that, the less he enraged himself with this man the better. Instead though, he ended up asking, "Why though? You said it before, I shouldn't have even gotten the interview in the first place."

"Like I also said before, I get it," the Captain said.

The corner of Simon's eye twitched. That couldn't be it. There had to be more. There must have been an angle here. "I don't think you do." He took a small step away from his superior and continued on as evenly as he could force himself to, "There's a bloody good reason General Shepherd called me 'Ghost'. I'm barely even a _shell_ of a man at this point. I'm a soldier, I get my work done, and that's _it_." When he finally stopped, he realized just what he did. A definite break in the rules right there... Talking back to a commanding officer...

Said commanding officer though didn't show signs of anger or even disappointment towards his outburst. Just a plain acceptance. "We all have different ways of coping, and if you want to entertain the idea that you're dead inside, fine. _Ghost_ it is. But you're not just a soldier at the end of the day."

"A clock can still tick and be broken," he retorted.

"You can _fix_ a broken clock, Lieutenant."

That was how they parted, on those words and Simon fuming. On his way out though, he ended up running into another man heading to the same office. This man was a bit shorter than him and sported the thickest grove of a mustache he'd seen in the service. He looked up at Simon under the rim of his boonie hat, a dark glimmer in his icy gaze.

All in all, this man was generally intimidating. "Sorry," Simon offered quickly as he stepped around him to make a hasty retreat.

"Have a nice chat with him?" The old man asked.

 _Fuck me._ Simon stopped and tried to think of the least telling answer. "You could say that." He turned to face him. "I, uh, have things I have to take care of..." _Oh why the hell is he not wearing anything with a rank or a name or something?!_

"It's Captain Price," he stated, a deep frown working its way to his face. "And you must be that 'special case' Soap mentioned. Ghost, right?"

"Soap? Wait..." Simon mentally backpedalled through what was said, as he was mythed by this very sudden interaction with the infamous Captain Price. "I mean, yes, I'm Ghost, sir."

Price grunted under his breath. "Right then. He's expecting a lot out of you; you'd better be able to deliver." He then left Simon stunned in the corridor.

Simon blinked and hurried off, his head swimming with questions now. This interaction was so much different than he thought it would be. He doubted he made a good first impression. Who did Price even mean by "he" anyways? He thought that he meant MacTavish at first, but then Price said "Soap" and now it completely threw him off.

 _Actually, just who the bloody hell even is Soap?_

* * *

That's chapter 1 for you guys. I'll be trying to put up a chapter each week, so stay tuned.

As a cautionary note, there will be things here that contradict some form of canon or another. A lot of these are due to a fan video (Operation Kingfish) which was made canon in MW3 and Soap's Journal from the same game's hardened addition.  
In the journal, Soap was the sole leader of the Task Force 141 for not all that long, and it took Shepherd 5 years to form it. He makes it sound like Captain Price was definitely taken and locked away in the Gulag at the end of the first game. He makes zero mention of Operation Kingfish either. In order to make sense of events here, I had to interpret Soap's account differently than what it is at face value.  
So in this telling, Captain Price started as the leader of the 141, with Soap more or less acting as a second in command to him while he learns the ropes.  
There are, of course, other changes in this chapter, and I will gladly address any questions or comments concerning them.

One last thing, I am posting this fanfic in two places: here and on Wattpad. Keeping drafts on Wattpad is more reliable, seeing as I lost all my rough drafts for other stories here. However, I wanted to post the story here on Fanfiction, where it might get a bit more views.

Sorry for my long absence from the site. I hope you guys enjoy the story to come.  
Thanks for reading!


	2. Storm

Ghost had always liked the feel of Credenhill. On a good day in late spring with barely a cloud in the sky and just enough of a breeze to cut the heat some, there was simply few things better in his mind. It was the best time to run the obstacle course, or even just take a hike.

Today was not one of those days. In fact, it was the complete opposite, as is the standard in England. The sky was dark with heavy storm clouds that brought down sheets upon sheets of rain. Thunder rumbled off in the distance, though that the storm could very easily end up overhead in an hour.

It'd been a couple weeks now since Ghost had joined the Task Force 141, and he easily found himself slide right back into routine. There was comfort in the predictable day to day lull; busy work never bothered him any. Unlike many of the men here, he almost dreaded his down time at the end of the day. Often times he tried to distract himself with more work if he could, reading if he couldn't. With no friends to interact with, and Manchester too long of a drive to even bother, the only variety to be found was in the tasks he needed to do at work that day.

What made this stormy Saturday evening an exception? One word. MacTavish. After Ghost's initial frustration with him, he made a point not to be anything besides professional towards his CO. Fortunately, Captain Price kept the man so bogged down with paperwork that he didn't have to interact with him too often. Today, however, Ghost had off, and as the sadistic Lady Luck would have it, so did his Captain.

Ghost holed up in the rec room to read, as per usual, when a hand heavily landed on his shoulder. Almost immediately, the Lieutenant dropped the book and grabbed the offending hand, giving the other man's wrist a tight squeeze. "Can I help you?" He looked up, found himself face to face with his Captain, and immediately let go. "Sorry, sir."

Despite how hard he'd grabbed him, MacTavish was virtually unphased by it. "All good. What'cha up to?"

"Reading," was his curt response. He picked back up his book and leafed through the pages to find his place.

He could feel the Captain's weight as he leaned onto the back of the chair. "Anything good?"

 _Patience is a virtue..._ Ghost took a deep breath. "It's _'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'_. You tell me."

"So classics," he concluded.

"Is there a point to this?"

MacTavish hummed before he said, "You tell me. Do you think there's one?"

With a frown, Ghost gave up and shut the book then turned back to him. "I'm not sure I follow."

"Do you think there's a point," he repeated.

"I heard you the first time," Ghost deadpanned. "I'm just trying to mind my own business, sir. Don't you have friends to go talk to? Or maybe that extensive training regiment?" _Take a hint, just take a bloody hint._

"That doesn't answer my question."

Ghost dug his thumb nail into the spine of the book, a nervous habit. "I think you want something."

He immediately regretted giving MacTavish an answer at all, because that smirk that Ghost oh so loathed made its return. "I wanted to see if you've been trying to manage your stress. That's what we agreed on."

"I'm reading a good book on a rainy day, I think I'm fine, sir," Ghost replied.

That should have been satisfactory in Ghost's mind. Apparently it wasn't though for the Captain, as he said, "I know you pile as much work on yourself as possible, and when you aren't doing any of that then you're here reading. Are you actually relaxing or is this just a distraction for yourself?"

"What...?" He gawked at the other. _How?_ Either he was more obvious than he meant to be, or his Captain was far more observant than he gave him credit for. Ghost stood up now, gripping the book so tightly that the whole paperback tome bowed. "Fuck this, I'm going somewhere else to read."

Before Ghost could go far though, MacTavish grabbed him by the shoulder. "Come on."

After being dragged the first couple of steps, Ghost snapped "Let go!" and smacked at the Captain's arm with his book. The strike did virtually nothing except make MacTavish squeeze his shoulder even tighter as he pulled the unfortunate Lieutenant outside, straight into the rain. He didn't stop just outside the building either, he kept leading him away from the main compound until they were near the hiking trails and the building was little more than a phantom fog lamp in the storm. At this point, Ghost hit MacTavish again with the book with an annoyed, "Would you let go of me already?"

The Captain did, thankfully, and turned to Ghost with a serious glint in his eyes. "You want to yell at me, now's your chance to. Nobody's going to hear you out here over all the rain."

"You're out of your head," Ghost said, but the words were largely muted by the storm. "We're gonna get soaked out here!"

"And? Don't tell me you just don't want to get wet."

"I don't care if I get wet!"

"Then what is it, Ghost," he pressed, "you can say it out here."

If Ghost wasn't boiling with frustration, he would have been shivering as the cold rain left him completely soaked through. "Maybe I don't _want_ to say it, have you ever thought of that? Stop trying to get in my head!"

"Why don't you want to?"

"Because I don't, you stupid wanker! I want people to get off my damn arse and stop watching me like I'm some fucking landmine! I want people stop asking me what happened and just leave me alone already." Sound logic flew out the window at this point, as Ghost found it so much easier now to just keep shouting than to stop. "And here you come in, saying you understand what I'm going through. You weren't held up for months and tortured. You didn't live a broken life that you exhaustively put back together, only for it to be ruined by _one_ man! What the fuck could you know about any of that?"

Throughout Ghost's entire rant, Captain MacTavish stood there and listened. He didn't interject, he just waited until the pause. Then, with a clear air of calm, he rested a hand on Ghost's shoulder and told him, "You're right. I don't know. That doesn't stop me from trying to understand it though."

It was such a simple response, one that left Ghost shocked as he gaped at the Captain. All this time, the idea of someone just trying to understand him felt like a pipe dream. He'd written off all hopes of anyone ever trying. Much less the Captain of a highly elite task force. "Why?"

"Because, from the moment you stepped in my office, I knew you'd bring something different to this group. I think you're worth more than even you know."

Ghost pushed MacTavish's hand off of him. "Don't give me that load of bollocks. You didn't think that shit for a minute. I'll bet you didn't even have a fucking choice letting me in; General Shepherd's so far above you that you don't even try to make a rational decision. You said yourself, my record was reason enough for you to turn my arse away, so why the fuck didn't you, huh?"

This shut the Captain up for a good minute. That calm composure gave way to a muted shock.

Hands balled tight into fists, Ghost continued to shout, "Got nothing to say now? I'm right, aren't I? You didn't even second guess that bastard, now did you? If you tried, I'm sure you could've pressed that I'm not fucking stable enough for this sort of position. Instead you just went the fuck along with it even though there was no good reason to put any vested interest in me." With that, Ghost managed to yell himself breathless. He stopped to catch his breath, face heated despite the chilled rain.

MacTavish gave a slow nod, though still seemed stunned. "Alright... And do you feel any better now that you got that off your chest?"

"No, I don't. I'm cold and wet and frustrated. I didn't want to talk about this! I just wanted to be alone." Ghost huffed and turned on his heels. "To hell with this, I'm going inside..."

Upon hearing this, MacTavish tried to reach out and grab his shoulder. "Ghost, wait-"

"Don't touch me," he warned lowly, and headed back to the barracks, leaving his Captain standing alone in the rain.

-()-()-()-

Captain Price headed down to his and Soap's office to do a double check of what work still needed to get done before he could call it a night. What he didn't expect was to find Soap there, especially on his day off. It struck him as odd, since days off normally were an excuse for the younger to go off to town and pick up some 'provisions' (namely cigars and nip bottles of whiskey that would get stashed in a hidden space under the tabletop). Instead, Price found Soap sitting head down at the desk with a towel hanging off his neck and leaving a sizable puddle on the floor.

Standing in the doorway, Price strongly considered stepping out and leaving him to whatever existential crisis he was going through. The man tended to dwell on things and it could be a hassle to talk him out of it. With a heavy sigh, he decided it'd better to at least ask and make sure he was okay. "Soap, you still alive over there?"

He was met with a grunt as the Scot picked his head up off the table; a spot on his cheek was now bright red from being pressed down for so long. "Aye..."

"Any particular reason you're drenched?" He approached the desk now and started thumbing through the stack of paperwork left, adding in "Why didn't you get into something dry?"

Soap gave a half-hearted shrug. "I messed up, not exactly sure how to fix it."

It didn't sound like an actual answer to either of Price's questions, but it did provide far more context. "What'd you do now?"

"I tried to smooth things out with Ghost. I figured he had a lot of issues with me, so I pulled him out to tell me in private." He rubbed his hands against his face, groaning as he did so. "He yelled at me for a lot of shite, then just stomped off."

"I'm not all that surprised. You did put him on the spot." _Great... there's still a lot of papers to do..._

"But you'd think that by getting all those problems out in the open, it'd ease up some of the tension."

Price pulled a fairly thick stack of papers from the pile and smacked Soap upside the head with it. "Just give him time. He'll come around eventually."

Soap rubbed the side of his head. "And if he doesn't?"

"We'll address it. Now go get your arse in something dry and get some sleep. If I come back here in ten minutes and you're still sitting around dripping everywhere, I'll drag you to your quarters myself." With that, Price left on the thin hope that the younger would just follow his advice.

Ten minutes later proved otherwise.

* * *

Chapter 2, concluded.

Man, this one was a trip. I can't say I'll ever 100% like how it came out, but I've gone through it at least seven times "trying to make the words go" as they say. C'est la vie.

Thank you for the support I've been given so far. It's much appreciated.


	3. Sickly

As it turned out, standing out in the rain in late November doesn't do anyone any favors for their immune system. Although Ghost didn't experience much of any symptoms the next three days, he woke up on the fourth feeling like a corpse. His throat must have been the first thing to rot in his sleep, because it was outright painful to swallow. That would have been more than enough to make the Lieutenant's day a pain, but this was on top of fatigue that made his tasks far more rigorous than they should have been, and a persistent headache which absolutely refused to go away.

Despite this, he made an effort to work through it rather than see if he could take the day off to rest. He had a pretty good idea what the response would be if he went to bother the medic with it: take two Motrin, drink some water, get back to work. That was pretty run of the mill for a cold. If it were only that minor then it wasn't worth the trouble.

Now this plan of his would have worked just fine had he not run into Captain Price, who told him, "You're on sick call. Get your arse to the infirmary on the double." The speed at which he made this call was both impressive and extremely surprising, so much so that Ghost didn't even put up a word of resistance to this and immediately turned and headed straight down. The sudden development didn't even register fully with him until he entered the infirmary.

The medic gave Ghost a single look. One. Next thing the Lieutenant knew, it was all "Go sit down. Lemme have a look at you." While Doc got out a thermometer, he asked, "What seems to be the problem?"

"It's just a cold, no need to get alarmed," Ghost waved off, though still let the guy take his temp. "I's really no big deal..."

 _Beep beep._ "... Mm... You're running a temp of 38.3, mate."

The words left Ghost stunned. "That's... really high..."

"In other news, sky is blue." The medic grabbed a small flashlight off his desk next. "Alright, open your mouth." Ghost caught sight of the other man's nose crinkle as he looked inside. "It's looking like strep."

"Strep...?"

"Hey, keep your mouth open. I'm gonna get a sample." One deep throated cotton swab later, Doc broke out a kit to set up a quick test, then let that sit. "Alright. We'll check that in a few and see what comes up. In the meantime, I'll go get you some water."

Ghost gave a slow nod as all this processed. He'd heard at least a couple of people on base came down with strep throat within the last couple weeks, but he thought he'd managed to stay in the clear. The test said otherwise. "So what now?"

The medic opened up a cabinet and got out a pill bottle. "Simple. You're confined to quarters for a few days. Take these antibiotics and get plenty of rest. Hopefully by then we can get you back on light duty, but we'll see where you're at."

With that, Ghost went back to his quarters. It was little more than a small room with a bunk bed pushed to one wall and a desk near the other. Neither he nor Langley went out of their way to do anything to it, so it stayed as bare bones as the day they were assigned it. With the other out on duty, as normal, Ghost had the room to himself for the time being; not that he expected Langley back any time soon, he'd probably idle somewhere or other until it was curfew. Given the blissfully quiet moment, Ghost curled up under the covers and fell asleep.

His dreamless sleep was only disrupted by a knock on the door. He grunted and sat up. "...Who's that...?" He rubbed his eye and got up at this point to check. Opening the door only a crack, he found himself staring at Captain MacTavish. "Ugh... What the bloody hell do you want?"

He'd managed to avoid the man for the last few days. Seemed his luck ran out here; there was no way he could stop this confrontation. The Captain must've had the same line of thought. "I'm just here to check on you. Mind opening the door?"

Begrudgingly, Ghost opened the door and stood in the doorway. He immediately regretted it, as the slight draft from the hallway made him shiver and sorely want to be back in bed. Arms crossed and propped against the door frame, he croaked out, "Well? You checked, I'm fine."

"You need anything?" MacTavish asked. "You've been in here for most of the day."

 _Most of the...?_ Ghost glanced back at the clock on the table. Sure enough, it read 18:56. A tell tale sign he'd managed to sleep through "most of the day." He vaguely recalled someone popping in around noon with a cup of soup, but he lacked the appetite to finish it and now the cold broth sat by the clock. "Yes, because I've been sleeping."

"Did you need anything?" he asked again.

Ghost groaned. _Why can't he just take a hint?_ "No. I'm fine."

"You sure?"

"No, sir, I'm saying I'm fine because I'm _not_ sure." Ghost replied with a heavy dose of sarcasm. "You don't need to get me anything. You can leave."

MacTavish almost seemed disappointed with this, but ultimately he stopped pursuing it with a heavy sigh and a simple "Alright." Before he left, though, he did give this warning: "I'll check on you tomorrow."

"You don't need to do that," Ghost insisted.

His Captain was already walking away when he said it. Ghost figured that his protest went unheard until MacTavish stopped at the corner and stated, "I want to, though."

Ghost shut the door and curled under his covers. He had to give it to MacTavish, he excelled at being a persistent pain in the ass...

-()-()-()-

Day Two of his SIQ status, Ghost managed to sleep in till 10:00. By then, his body refused to sleep anymore. Although he wanted to wake up at a normal time and tell Langley to maybe get him a few things if the man had some spare time, he heard the alarm go off and simply fell back to sleep. Now Langley was off doing whatever Langleys do and Ghost was very much alone in the dorm; awake and bored.

At some point he broke out a notepad and started doodling. It started with little squiggles and dots from tapping his pen on the page. Eventually he focused in on a single sketch. What started as a front view of a head morphed into a skull as he added in more and more detail. What were normal eyes and a nose were lost to black pits, and the earliest indication of a mouth became the line between the top and bottom teeth. He etched in some shading, especially around the cheek bones.

He flipped the page over and started again, this time though the skull became more stylized. It actually looked pretty cool, like a logo or something along those lines.

His drawing session ended with a knock on the door. Ghost quickly stashed the notepad under the blanket, threw on his coat, and went to answer the door. Sure enough, it was MacTavish. Big surprise there... "What now?"

"Just checking in. How you feeling?"

"Aren't you concerned you're going to catch this, even just a little bit?" Ghost shot back.

MacTavish shrugged. "No. Should I be?"

"I could just cough on you," Ghost threatened.

"And I could just be a healthy guy."

Ghost bumped his head against the door frame, though this only seemed to amuse the bastard more than anything. He resolved not to shout out his frustration.

The Captain chose not to continue the current path the conversation was headed down, and instead simply asked, "You cold?"

"'cuse me?" Ghost glowered at him.

"You're wearing a coat indoors," he elaborated, pointing to the article in question. "There're extra blankets in the supply closet, do you need one?"

This gave Ghost some pause. An extra blanket would be nice. He still shivered under the one he had. He could rest a lot more soundly with the added warmth and maybe recover faster too.

Without an answer, MacTavish smiled. "I'm not hearing a no~"

"Yeah, fine. Whatever..." Ghost finally grumbled. With this, he sighed. "Before you ask - and I know you'll ask - no, I didn't eat. I'll get myself lunch later, so don't worry about it."

"Alright, one blanket coming up then. I'll be back in a couple minutes."

 _Of course you will_. Ghost turned and went straight back to bed. Almost immediately, he was reminded that he shoved his notebook under the covers, as the wire spiral holding it together ended up under his thigh until he pulled it back out. Fortunately none of it was damaged. There was definitely something he could do with this. After a minute, he shimmied under the blanket and waited, tapping his finger on the page as he waited. One thing became readily apparent: The Captain was taking his sweet time.

The combined warmth of his jacket and his single blanket had a tranquilizing effect on him. He'd thought there was no way he could have still been tired, even if he'd already been awake for an hour by now, but here he was struggling to keep his eyes open. Yawning only helped for seconds at most. In even less time, he could shut his eyes and not notice for at least a minute.

Ghost was dimly aware of the door opening, he certainly heard it. He opened his eyes just enough to see the Captain's muscled figure, soon vanished behind a flutter of white. He was sure he said something, that there was a response to him, but whatever the exchange was went in one ear and out the other. The only thing that stuck was a warm chuckle after.

Whatever followed that was lost in his tired haze.

-()-()-()-

Soap had told him a couple minutes, but it really ended up taking him several, something he cursed himself out for on the way back to the dorm. It wasn't his fault that when he arrived at the supply closet, some genius knocked an open box of floodlights off the top shelf. Bubble wrap can only do so much. He ended up helping Gridlock with clean up, which really didn't add more than a few minutes to his time.

He knocked a few times on Ghost's door and waited for an answer. When none came, and there definitely was no sound in there, he cracked open the door to look inside. He found the Lieutenant propped up against his pillow, a notebook on his lap, and faintly snoring. With a small smile, Soap let himself in.

Ghost lifted his head and watched him through glazed over grey eyes as Soap unfolded the blanket he'd brought and gave it a small shake. While he laid the blanket out on top of the Lieutenant, he heard him grumble, "I can do it just fine..."

"You can barely keep your eyes open, mate. Don't worry about it." Soap took the notebook off Ghost's lap. While he did notice a few skull drawings, he paid it little mind.

This action caused Ghost to smack his thigh just a little too late to stop his book from getting taken. "The bloody 'ell are you doin'?"

"Relax, I'm just putting it on the table," Soap assured, shutting the notebook and setting it aside. He chuckled though at the response. "You don't need to get so def-" he turned back to Ghost, only to find he'd fallen asleep. Shaking his head, Soap pulled the covers up a little on him and headed to the door. "See you at lunch then."

The next couple of hours between then and lunch passed all too quick with the work he still had to do. Price sure as hell got on his ass for not having somebody else go check on Ghost. 'Course, Soap knew better. When he'd been laid up in Birmingham after the seven day hell they'd lived through, Price kept checking in on him. Calls at first, Price had been in worse shape than he was at the time, but the second the old man was out of the hospital he visited periodically. Caring for their men was important.

Paperwork was a pretty convincing argument though...

So Soap hauled through as much papers as he possibly could to make it up to Price. He pretty much made a system for it. If it was quick, required little time to decide on, he handled it himself. Anything more was set aside for later. Anything that needed to be addressed by the technical Captain and not him (the understudy) was given its own stack. In a little less than two hours, the 15 cm high pile of work was reduced to a pair of stacks barely as thick as his pinkie. He was pretty proud of the progress.

When lunch rolled along, he ended up taking whatever was left of the papers with him and sat with Price to talk them all over. At least that much was the plan. He found him getting distracted over one tiny detail that lingered from earlier: Ghost said he'd be there to get some lunch yet he was nowhere in sight.

"Soap, are you even listening?"

"Hm? Sorry. Run it by me again?" Soap requested, rubbing the back of his neck as he made an effort to refocus.

Price sighed. "Try and pay attention, I'm not always going to be around to do all the leg work for you."

Soap frowned at this. It was something his Captain said a lot in recent months. He acted like at any point he could just up and vanish without a trace. The idea seemed too far fetched for MacTavish to comprehend. The old man was still going strong after at least two decades worth of service; there was no way he'd just _stop_ , right? Still though, Price had a point. He couldn't rely on his experience and judgement forever, not if he wanted to ever be a real Captain. "Alright. I know. I'm listening."

"Right then," Price shifted one of the papers and pointed out a few lines he'd already underlined at some point during his initial explanation. "There's a developing pattern in Ukraine. An unaffiliated group has been taking hostages every few weeks and demanding larger and larger sums of ransom. The Ukrainian government is willing to work with us to put a stop to these criminals, though it's nothing official yet."

"So we could be going to Ukraine in the near future," Soap concluded.

Price nodded. "It's a definite possibility. It won't be a bad idea to take a look at everyones' skill sets and make a tentative team roster, just in case they take more hostages and we're asked to mobilize quickly."

"I see what you mean." Much the rest of the conversation was the same. They had to be ready to act in several instances, and how to prepare best for them. A full half hour passed before they got through the reports. With them finished, Price finally let Soap free to do whatever else needed to get done.

Of course, Soap took it upon himself to see what was left in the kitchen before he would consider leaving the mess hall. He ended up with a chicken salad sandwich wrapped up in wax paper and a bottle of orange juice. It'd do just fine.

As he anticipated, Ghost was still asleep like Soap had left him. He decided to be quiet and simply dropped off the meal on the table and left. Although part of him wanted to leave a note stating that it was in fact him who brought it, he figured it wasn't important so long as the Lieutenant ate the sandwich.

Hopefully he liked chicken salad. Soap sure as shit didn't.

* * *

Getting that obligatory sick chapter out of the way early.

Really this chapter is a whole lot of set up with a fluffy exterior.

As some of you may have noticed, Ghost doesn't actually have his signature skull balaclava yet. It'll come, just you wait~

Thanks for the support so far, and I look forward to uploading the next chapter.


	4. Getting Better

Chicken salad had never been a favorite of Ghost's. He'd stomach it for the sake of being polite, but he never enjoyed it. There was something about the texture that bothered him. He liked the chicken salad on base even less as it somehow it managed to be grainy and slimy at the same time. It also lacked any smell or taste whatsoever.

So when Ghost woke to find a chicken salad sandwich and a bottle of orange juice sitting on the table along with his notebook - _w_ _hen did that even get there?_ \- he felt something between annoyance and half hearted acceptance. He wanted to believe it was a considerate gesture, and not just a terrible joke with stomach pain being the punchline.

That was yesterday.

Day three of SIQ, Ghost was visited again by Captain MacTavish. Big surprise there. This time though, he didn't stop by until 18:00, which Ghost chalked up to probably being too busy. He could only sigh at this point. "You're persistent."

"And you're grouchy," the Captain returned. "Been taking care of yourself?"

He rolled his eyes. "I have. Have you been getting your work done?"

"I have." MacTavish crossed his arms. "Mind if I come in?"

"Why?" Ghost narrowed his eyes at the sudden request. He never asked this before.

MacTavish shrugged, but it didn't make him look any less guarded. "It seems silly to talk over the threshold like this every time."

Ghost looked at the hinges of the door, then back at the Captain. A thought came to him: MacTavish was willing to let him in despite the conflicting reports, held zero grievance for the times he spoke out of turn, still was trying to talk to him after he yelled at him... Ghost had been given so many chances and for what? Nothing changed between them. What could possibly be the man's endgame if he was willing to go through all this trouble? "Tell you what, I might let you in if you answer something."

"Okay, bridge keeper, what's your third question," MacTavish asked.

"Back when you interviewed me, you got your hands on my old records. I want to know how you managed that when the General went through all the trouble of redacting them." Ghost gave him a pointed stare.

MacTavish ran a hand through his hair. "I'm surprised you didn't ask sooner. When Shepherd gave me his recommendation, I searched for your records. There was a massive hole where nothing was accounted for, so that's when I got to digging. The shit I found painted a very different picture, to say the least."

That answered one thing, he sure as shit wasn't supposed to have the information he did. "And Captain Price? Does he know too?"

"Aye, no one else though. Shepherd doesn't know that we do and we intend to keep it that way. When I said that I had every reason not to accept you in, I meant it."

Ghost dug his nails a little into the door frame, leaving a couple tiny dents in the beige paint. "So why did you?"

"When did one more question turn into four?" The Captain shook his head. "My telling you to see a therapist, wasn't entirely because I wanted an assessment of your mental health. It was to see if you would be cooperative. I figured if you refused, then I would just have to write you off and fabricate a story for why you weren't let in. But you agreed to it and that was enough for me."

So that nonsense was just a trust exercise? All this time, he'd been convinced that MacTavish was just following the General's orders, when in reality his actions were entirely his own. A part of him didn't want to believe it. It clashed too much with his paradigm of him, yet the more he thought back on what was said, the more it made sense.

"Ghost?"

Finally the Lieutenant snapped himself from his thoughts. "This is a lot to take in..." He took a step back from the door. "Alright, fine. You can come in."

MacTavish stepped in, though didn't stray too far from the door. "Any other questions I gotta answer? Or did that just about cover everything?"

The question took a minute to process, as Ghost still was trying to come to terms with the fact he just willingly let the Captain in his room for something other than an inspection. "Uh... Actually, I do have _one_ other question. Who's 'Soap'?"

The color drained from MacTavish's face, and he let out a strained laugh. "Damn Price... Soap's my callsign. I was _hoping_ it would die."

"How the bloody hell do you get a stupid nickname like that?" Ghost wondered.

"I don't want to get into that, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't use it. I can barely tolerate it from Price as it is."

"Touchy." Ghost grinned, sitting down on his bed. "Now I'm curious. Slip in the shower?"

'Soap' shook his head. "Nothing like that. It was just something stupid from the muppets in the 3rd Battalion. They started it, it stuck through Selection all the way to the SAS."

It was something Ghost couldn't sympathize with. When he'd joined the military years ago, callsigns simply didn't stick to him. It was easier to just call him Riley. Beyond performance, he didn't do anything to inspire his comrades to come up with crazy nicknames. There was 'English' during that time when he'd been working with the Americans, but it left such a bitter taste in his mouth. He figured 'Ghost' wouldn't last in the Task Force either. Three weeks proved otherwise, as his real name faded from conversations, replaced with the ominous callsign.

"At any rate," MacTavish said, "I've been meaning to apologize for the other day."

The sudden change of topic was more than a little jarring. Was this really why he wanted to step in to talk? Ghost couldn't exactly pin down what he felt about this, much less find the words to express it. Instead he just stared blankly.

The lack of response didn't go unnoticed, as MacTavish gave an uncomfortable chuckle. "I, uh, I thought I could fix the problem if I just tackled it head on. That didn't exactly turn out like I hoped. I get if you still don't wanna touch any of that. It just didn't feel right not to say sorry at the very least."

Ghost rubbed his eyes, finding himself very much tired all of the sudden. God, what was he doing? His actions thus far had been spiteful, antisocial. That wasn't any way for a soldier to act, not to his superior, and definitely not to a teammate. Yet that hadn't deterred the Captain. Nothing seemed to. "Yeah... I came down on you pretty hard, so don't feel too bad." He toyed with his fingers, uncertainty in his eyes. "I shouldn't have said most of it."

"I asked you to," MacTavish pointed out, "that's not the point though. We got off on the wrong foot."

"I've noticed," Ghost agreed. "I guess it doesn't _have_ to stay that way."

"If you stop avoiding me, then I'll try not to be so pushy." He extended a hand out to Ghost. "Deal?"

Ghost looked at the large hand, taking in the many scars that striped his fingers and palm. A fair few looked fresher than others, months old at most. _So many questions._ He took hold of it and gave MacTavish a firm shake. "Deal."

And just like that, the issue between them had been settled. For now. He'd be civil at least, put on a false smile for the Captain. If it stopped the questions, got the man off his back, then Ghost didn't care if he was dishonest. Even if it meant that he'd never understand him...

He didn't need understanding, he needed to just get his job done.

-()-()-()-

In the following week, Ghost was allowed back on regular duty, much to MacTavish's relief. Sick Ghost was almost... pathetic... MacTavish felt like he had to lock in all his energy around him, since Ghost didn't have the capacity to keep up otherwise. On a couple occasions, MacTavish managed to talk him to sleep; something he felt immensely bad for, seeing as they were in the mess hall one of those times.

Of course, there was some good that came from those talks. He was able to inquire about the sketches in the Lieutenant's notebook, and an idea was formed between the two of them. The design could be printed on a balaclava. Just the thought of what an enemy would think seeing a man running at them wearing that made the three days wait worth it. When the small parcel arrived at MacTavish's office, he grinned ear to ear and went to go find Ghost right away.

He found Ghost on the shooting range firing an M9 at targets as they popped up. He was quick, MacTavish had to give him that. After watching him fire off a couple more shots, he finally decided to make his presence known. "Oh, Ghost~"

"I swear to god, Captain, if you keep popping up out of nowhere, I'm throwing a magazine at your head." Despite his idle threat, Ghost still lowered the pistol and turned to face him. "What is it?"

"Somebody's cranky," MacTavish mused, earning a very annoyed look from him. "Guess what came in."

"An actual mission?" The Lieutenant deadpanned.

Something about that calloused attitude felt very comforting. He'd come to realize that any time Ghost looked like he was in a pleasant mood, it was more often than not a guise. His posture was ridged, his words far fewer. MacTavish had yet to bring it up with him. "Not quite." He threw the package his way.

With trained reflexes, Ghost caught it and eyed the label before giving him a confused look. Shaking his head, he then opened up the wrapping and pulled out the newly printed skull balaclava. A range of emotions crossed Ghost's face as he ran his thumb over the teeth and along the line of the cheekbone. "... You actually went through with it...?"

"You didn't think I would?" MacTavish leaned against the door frame, a wide smile on his face. That surprise made the trouble of getting the mask very, very worth it. "Try it on."

With a slow nod, Ghost slid the mask over his head, hiding his dark brown hair in the process. Once it was on, he shifted the bottom of the hole up onto the bridge of his nose and held out his arms. "Well?"

Much to the Captain's own surprise, the look very much suited him. He'd expected it to look bad and to get a laugh out of it. That wasn't the case. Just as they both agreed, it was a decidedly intimidating look. Little did he know, he was actually staring.

"Did you drop your brain off at the door? Wake the hell up," Ghost snapped.

"Sorry, mate, just impressed," he finally answered. "It turned out looking better than expected." He looked him up and down. "It's missing something though... Put on your sunglasses."

"What?"

"Just put them on."

With a weird look, Ghost slipped his sunglasses off the collar of his shirt and put them on. The lenses were a dark rust color, but gleamed orange in the light. It completed the look nicely.

"You have got to see yourself. It looks amazing."

Ghost scoffed, but there was something almost lighthearted about it. "This is nonregulation."

"Your point?" The Captain asked, arching one brow.

There was a minute tick of Ghost's, a twitch of his cheek when he was trying not to sneer. "You're ridiculous."

"That's half my charm," MacTavish responded. "I'll let you get back to your drills. Bye."

Following the exchange, he headed off to wrap up whatever duties he still had to handle. He reached his office and, just as he touched the handle, found himself kissing the wooden door. The collision made him stumble a bit, as the door opened with such force. "Ah, bollocks..."

"..Soap?" He heard Price in front of him, followed by the door shutting. "Oh, damn, didn't see you, son."

"It's fine." The younger touched under his nose to check for blood. His fingertips came back red and he breathed a heavy sigh of frustration. He stepped around Price to go get some tissues in the office. "'Scuse me."

Price followed him in. "I was actually just about to go looking for you. Shepherd's bumped an assignment our way."

Soap nodded whilst he plugged up his nostril with a tissue. "Ukraine?"

"Right." Price smiled and patted his shoulder. "You remember the team comp. Get them assembled at 15:00 for briefing. I want to discuss the plan with you in ten though."

"Ten. Got it."

* * *

And so ends another chapter. This ties in a few specific details that some here may have noticed (or I may have brought up in a previous author's note, I don't recall). One namely being how Ghost got his skull balaclava. In the comic, he's seen having it by the hostage situation in Ukraine, but he didn't have it during any of the story he tells as a diversion. Obviously we don't know how he actually got it, so your guess is as good as mine. For the sake of this story's tone and themes, I felt like it'd be better to give Ghost a bit more sanity than he sometimes gets in fan fiction and have the mask not exactly be his idea, nor have it entirely be connected to his edge lord backstory. Hopefully this makes sense.


	5. A Mask that Hides Nothing

While most of the nine men called down to the cramped conference room didn't seem to have a clue what the situation was, Ghost liked to think that he had a pretty good idea. Word of an Ultranationalist faction in Ukraine taking hostages and slipping out of sight for weeks before emerging to do it again didn't escape his notice. If they were doing anything about it, it was either because of some agreement with the Ukrainian government, or this group was threatening their interests in the region. He had no idea which it was.

His hunch proved to be correct as Price got the briefing started. While he carried on, Ghost took notice of MacTavish sitting to the side, his hand practically a blur as he scribbled away on a clipboard. Either those were some serious notes or he was fucking around, neither would surprise him.

"-As you can guess, we don't know where they're stationed," Price told them, "but intel's pointing to a publishing building in Lysychansk being their next target and they're due for another hold up. We're looking at 50 plus hostages being used as human shields and bargaining chips, but beyond that there's no indication of special equipment or tactics that would make them stand out. The plan right now is simple. We get in position, wait for them to make their move, then defuse the situation as fast as possible before anyone gets hurt. Any questions so far?"

Of all people it ended up being Toad to raise his hand. "Will there be any aid from the Ukrainian government? Local police or anything?"

Price frowned and opened the laptop on the table so he could set up the projector. "They're aware of the situation and we can expect them on standby if things go south. Otherwise, it's just us." As he finished saying this, an aerial photo of the building came up on the white wall. "The tentative plan is as follows: we got three teams, Alpha team takes position on the rooftops across the streets and provides sniper support while Bravo team and Charlie team split up and enter through the front and back of the building. We clear it out, secure the hostages, and meet in the middle."

The plan sounded simple enough. Ghost felt undeniably confident with it, all things considered. With that, Price went on to divide up the group into their three teams. Price was in charge of Alpha team, with Toad, Buck, and Angel; MacTavish would lead Gridlock, Marlin, and Crane in Bravo team; Ghost was given authority over Langley, Ares, and Gator for Charlie team. They had 3 hours to suit up before they would deploy.

While he gathered up his equipment, Ghost found the skull mask he'd haphazardly shoved in his other pair of pants. He stared at it for several long seconds. He could go down and get a plain black one, less conspicuous. He sighed and pulled it over his head until it only covered his neck. When were balaclavas ever inconspicuous?

And with that marked the beginning of the Task Force's service.

-()-()-()-

Whenever MacTavish wanted nothing more than for a plan to follow its expected course, the universe had a funny habit of throwing spanners in the works just to mess with him. They spent two whole days waiting for this little terrorist faction to take action with zero indication that the plans would change, then, the minute there's word that anything's happened, it's nothing like they planned for. Instead of the publishing company, a basic school was taken on the third day. Suddenly approximately 50 hostages became children and teachers. Just to make matters worse, Command jumped them with how they need to divert to join up with the Ukrainian MPs a half klick west of the school.

If it were up to him, he would have just chucked his ear piece against a tree. His frustration towards the situation didn't ease up as they spoke with the sergeant and his squad who'd been sent to meet them. The conversation was difficult to follow, as Sergeant Gregory spoke primarily in Ukrainian, which MacTavish had little grounding in, but would swap to very broken English in a painful attempt to clarify what he was saying (spoiler alert: it made things more confusing). The only one who had any inkling what he was going on about was Ghost at this point, who became the unwitting translator for everyone else.

"Alright, look, they're not saying we don't know what we're talking about, just that our intel's off." Ghost huffed, looking between a very impatient Gregory and an unamused Price who were both locked in a glaring contest. "Apparently these bastards are claiming that they rounded up all the kids in one room. Since the building's got four floors worth of classrooms, they could be anywhere."

Sgt. Gregory grumbled something that MacTavish could only vaguely connect to children.

"In short, we're gonna need a better plan," Ghost sighed.

"When's the executing start?" Price asked, _finally_ breaking eye contact with Gregory.

"They'll kill a kid at 3 pm and another every hour until their demands are met; if we attack then they'll gun all the kids down right there." Ghost turned to Gregory and carried a short exchange with him before adding, "We don't have a whole lotta time, and we can't get close without their snipers spotting us."

As much as MacTavish wanted to stay their current course, the prospect of getting picked off by snipers didn't sound all that appealing. With their force suddenly being so large, it would be impossible to make a stealthy approach. Storming the building was too risky as well with all the hostages involved.

"Well we can't just expect them to ignore us," Price pondered, looking up the road towards the school. "Somehow we need to buy ourselves time."

Ghost shifted a little, causing a loud crunch of snow under his boot. "If I may, sir, I have an idea."

The moment he spoke up, both Captains and Sgt. Gregory gave him expecting looks.

"We need to somehow locate the kids and distract the group at the same time. So what if we send one man ahead to get captured. Odds are they'll put him in with the other hostages rather than spread out to keep them separated. Once inside, he can make sure that all the kids are safe and find some way to distract the terrorists while everyone else gets into position."

It sounded like absolute madness. MacTavish cast Ghost an uncertain look. "They could just kill that single man though."

"Right. That's why whoever we send's got to be able to talk fast and make them think it's in their best interest not to," Ghost replied. "Seeing as I'm the only one here who can do that, I'm more than willing to take the risk."

"We can find another way-"  
"It's crazy enough to work-"  
MacTavish turned to Price, absolutely mythed. How could he possibly think this was remotely a good idea? There was too much that could just go wrong. "You can't be serious, Captain."

Price crossed his arms. "You got a better plan?"

With a resigned sigh, MacTavish shook his head. "No."

"We can work out the details on the way, let's move."

-()-()-()-

Two layers of long johns only help so much, as far as cold's concerned, but you'd think under both a uniform and coat, Ghost would have been toasty as he crept up towards the school building. That wasn't the case by any stretch of the imagination. At least the cold took his mind off how absurd this plan actually was.

Here he was, making his advance look as convincing as possible so that he would get captured and held hostage by terrorists. No guarantee that he'd be captured, or that he'd be left with the children, or that he could even free himself later. Their plan hinged on all these uncertainties. It amazed him that Captain Price even agreed to it.

If nothing else, the disconnect between the two Captains said a lot... The uneasy look on MacTavish's face wasn't something he expected. Even if he ultimately deferred to Price's judgment, he was clearly bothered by it.

" _Ghost,_ _Toad's_ _gotcha on the scope, we're watching your progress from the hill. Over._ "

Ghost rolled his eyes behind his sunglasses. MacTavish may as well be a mother hen. "Roger..." He hopped over a brick wall and then ducked behind a slide. From there, he peered up at the building. "So far, so good. The snipers haven't spotted me yet. I'm going to try and get inside before I let them catch me."

" _Alright. Remember, you're on your own if things go south. Don't take any unnecessary risks._ "

"I know what I'm getting myself into," Ghost grumbled to himself before giving a flat "I copy" in response. He glanced up at the three snipers he could see. One idled on the roof, the other two were positioned in windows on the third and fourth floors. With careful calculating, he waited until the best moment and sprinted to the wall of the building.

His lungs burned from the cold air as he looked back at the tracks he left in the snow. With all the other foot prints of dozens of children and teachers on the playground, he doubted that the snipers would notice just one more set of them. With a deep breath, he cocked his M9 and double checked to make sure he could readily reach his knife.

Time to search for a way in. He stuck close to the wall, in the snipers' blind spot, and checked each window as he passed. After about the sixth or so, he found one that was unlocked and readily slid open. He grinned under his mask and ducked inside before shutting the window.

"Alright, I'm inside. Time to stir trouble."

" _Roger that. Be careful._ " MacTavish said.

It didn't take long for Ghost to figure out that the first floor was completely deserted. There were signs of earlier chaos; papers littered the floors, backpacks dropped in random places, lockers left open. There was a bullet hole through one of the lockers, coupled with blood splatter, that seemed more than a little ominous. "First floor's clear. No sign of either the group or the hostages. Moving up to the second."

He climbed the stairs and peaked around the corner. A pair of masked men were patrolling the halls, AK-47s in hand.

"Enemy contact. I may be going dark soon-"

"What do we have here?"

Ghost had maybe five seconds to process the question before the butt of a rifle cracked against the back of his head and sent him stumbling into the corridor.

" _Ghost? What was that? Do you copy?_ "

"I'm compromised," he breathed into the microphone as he raised his hands up in a show of surrender to the terrorist before him, a blond haired guy in a sweater pointing an assault rifle right in his face. The moment he got a good look at Ghost, in all his skull masked glory, he appeared at least a bit perturbed.

"Drop the gun," blondy barked in Ukrainian and pushed the barrel against Ghost's neck. "Drop the gun!"

"Alright, alright," Ghost lowered the pistol and set it on the floor. "Gun's down."

"Hands behind your head." Blondy kicked away the pistol. Ghost saw one of the guards pick it up from the corner of his eye. "Now!"

Complying, Ghost brought his hands behind his head while remaining very much calm in the face of this clear threat. "You plan on shooting me?"

He scowled and signaled for the two guards, who promptly stepped in at either of side of Ghost. "Restrain him and put him with the others. If his comrades try anything, he's getting shot too." He grabbed the headset off of Ghost and took hold of his chin. "Viktor will want to hear that we have a little Westerner Specialist sneaking around."

Without a word from either of the guards, they dragged Ghost off towards the stairs and then up to the third floor. The whole time, Ghost followed a mental map of where he was. He came in on the southwest corner through the window, and the two sets of stairs were close together in the center of the smallish school building. At the third floor, they dragged him left and then they took a right... That brought him to the southeast corner of the school. The room they arrived in only had windows on one side, the south wall. All the tables and desks had been dragged into the hallway to make room in here and barricade the corridors.

Turning his attention away from the layout, Ghost quickly took in the sight of forty children of varied ages all forced together and sitting close. A fair few wouldn't look up, but some of them hazarded small peeks as he was brought in. The several teachers were all lined up towards the east wall, bound and gagged with duct tape. One man had half his head soaked in blood from a heavily damaged ear, but beyond that no one appeared to be hurt.

One of the guards stepped away to grab a chair and some rope. "Let's get him ready for Andrij. Hold him down."

It was hardly a struggle for them to get Ghost restrained to the chair. He put up only a token resistance, just for the show of it. They had him facing the horde of children, and by now a bunch more were daring to look up at him. None of them were restrained, Ghost noted, the only thing keeping them from fighting back was fear of getting shot.

It took only a few minutes for blondy to arrive, looking no more in a good mood than before. He turned straight to Ghost. "That was a foolish move. We know you are special ops. Now, where are the rest of your comrades?"

"Not here," Ghost answered flatly. "You won't find anyone but me in this building."

"Andrij, do you really think he-"

"Be quiet," blondy (or rather Andrij, Ghost assumed) hissed and snatched Ghost's sunglasses off his face. "You expect me to believe that you came _alone_?"

Ghost shrugged as best he could in his current position. "Eh, whether you choose to believe it isn't gonna change it, mate."

Andrij snapped the sunglasses in half at the bridge, a small vein throbbing at his temple. "We intend to kill children in one and a half hours, and you mean to tell me that only you came? What laughable excuse for a cover is that?" He turned and pointed to the two guards who brought Ghost in. "Search the building. Keep your radio on and find this liar's team."

Both guards exited. As the door shut, Ghost got slapped across the face. He tried not to appear too phased though. "You're not going to find them. They're not in here."

"You'd better hope they are not," Andrij said, his tone edged in barbs. "If we find a single one of your comrades, we will shoot you and all the children here."

"Piss off."

The mild resistance was rewarded with a stomp to the foot and a punch to his stomach. While Ghost did his best not to focus on the pain, he saw Andrij wind back for another swing that cracked across his jaw. He felt something pull in his neck from how fast and sharply his head went sideways.

"Alright, so you can punch, bet that hurt you as much it did me," Ghost remarked, experimentally opening and closing his mouth. Nothing seemed to be broken at least.

"Enough playing game, where are your comrades?"

"Not here."

And that's how this went for the next twenty minutes. Ghost continued to try and confuse them while Andrij got more and more frustrated with the direction this interrogation took. When the guards finally returned and relayed that they found no one else in the building, that's when Andrij finally snapped.

"Do you think we are stupid? I serve twelve years in the _Spetsnaz_. This attempt was as transparent as it was _pathetic_." Andrij grabbed his rifle and whipped Ghost across the face with the stock, earning a pained grunt as his head turned sharply back to the side. "You have only restored my _hope_ in the Republic."

Ghost took a short breath as a few dark spots found their way into his vision. He became dimly aware that something warm was trickling down from the corner of his eye. He didn't say anything at this point, he had to think of a way to stall for time.

"Still, it is unfortunate. I _know_ how this will work. Come three o'clock, we will shoot a child." Andrij sighed and composed himself. "Then maybe they will take us _seriously_."

"A whole hour?" Ghost looked around at the children in the room. He had to do something. Somehow he had to distract these guys, and keep all these hostages from panicking. Well, at least he had a lot he could talk about... "So how 'bout a little story while we wait? I bet you're wondering why I wear these bones on my face. It's a tribute to an old friend of mine. He's dead now, but man if he wasn't the baddest motherfucker on the planet."

Much to his relief, he grabbed everyone's attention with this. He just had to keep it.

"Riley was his name. Simon Riley. He was one of them S.A.S. boys. Some say they're the tops. And Riley..." Ghost grinned under his mask. Thank Lord MacTavish wasn't able to hear any of this. "He was the _best_ of 'em."

* * *

This was an interesting chapter to write, since it heavily involves the Ghost comics. I really liked the idea of explaining how Ghost ended up in that room telling kids about his backstory.  
Something to note, I did a thing in this chapter where the Ukrainian is translated and in . This is how that's handled in the comics. My idea for this is that for future chapters, I will simply use this to indicate that they're not speaking English but the person whose PoV we're in can understand what's being said. If we end up in a PoV that the person wouldn't know what's being said, I'll either gloss over that they're speaking a separate language or have it in the language.  
Also, I apologize for the break between chapters. I've been busy sorting out life. Between a career change in the future and the eventuality of college, I've been preoccupied.


	6. Baited Breath

There had been many times in the past that MacTavish questioned Price's decisions. You don't go through basic training, a couple of tours, and Selection all to get into Special Air Services and come out without at least a shred of common sense. And, if he were being completely honest with himself, he knew a lot of his Captain's plans were at the very least borderline insane. Despite that they always worked out in the end. Did the ends justify the means? Maybe not, but Price cared more about the destination than the road itself.

At the same time, in spite of his better judgement, he always ended up trusting Price's decisions. It was something of a safety clip to him. Unlike Price, he worried about the cost of winning. He hesitated with risk. A soldier can't afford hesitation.

As a result, he was drawn between fear for Ghost's safety and trust in Price's authority. He tried so very hard to justify it, coming up with reasons why it'd turn out okay. The best he could come up with was that as long as Ghost could just keep his fucking brain inside his skull, then he could give the signal and they would move in according to plan. If he gets shot on sight then it all goes out the window.

So he listened to every update from Ghost, watching the building through the trees as he nervously drummed his fingers on the side of his M21. There were stretches of time, minutes, when Ghost said absolutely nothing, and it left MacTavish to his wild imagination. In that time, he could be captured, something could have gone wrong.

" _Enemy contact. I may be going dark soon-_ " Ghost's statement was cut off by a clack and a yelp.

Immediately, MacTavish sat up and asked, "Ghost? What was that? Do you copy?" His heart hammered as he waited for a response.

Seconds passed before a faint " _I'm compromised..._ " was uttered. What followed was some exchange in mostly Ukrainian. No gun shot though.

"Alpha Team," MacTavish finally said, "this Bravo Six, bone's in the dog house. Over."

" _Copy_ ," Price returned. " _We're just going to have to sit tight and see if they took the bait._ "

More time passed, at least ten minutes. Finally a voice came over the line, a gruff and heavily accented one. " _To any Western forces who wish to interfere, this is Viktor. We have captured your comrade. We know he was alone. If you dare to advance on our position, we will gun down him and every hostage. Our terms still stand._ "

At this point, they all switched their channels to avoid being overheard. " _That's our cue. Alpha Team will be moving up to reconnect with Bravo Team. Charlie Team, get ready._ "

" _Roger that, Price, I'll lead Ares and Gator around to the south side and get in position,_ " Langley, the impromptu leader of Charlie Team, responded. If all went well, they'd be Ghost's immediate back up.

MacTavish looked back at the rest of his team; Gridlock and Marlin were ready to move, Crane got to his feet, and Toad continued to keep an eye on the building through his scope.

-()-()-()-

14:17...

"Now Roba had Riley and since he wasn't dead, he knew the torture was soon coming. An' let me tell you-" Ghost was cut off by one of the terrorists tightening the ropes on his wrists. He looked back over his shoulder at the masked man and snapped, "Hey! If you tie 'em any tighter, lad, I'm gonna escape on account of my _hands_ falling off."

This thin threat was enough to make the guard stop and step back. He proceeded to fix his black jacket.

"Right... so, speaking from experience, they got torture down there the Kremlin couldn't even dream of." The moment Ghost said this, one girl in particular looked absolutely mortified. "Don't worry, sweetie, all this is long over now. But it was painful to the body and mind. Putting even Riley and his highly trained men to the test. But the one thing pain does is bring up things that show a man who he really is inside. Like it or not. Discipline, precision, _control_. These are what Riley built his _whole life_ on. Break those down and the dark stuff begins to ooze out..."

While he spoke, some children whispered between one another, only to be hushed by another guard. That one had a brown jacket. Perhaps the only one who did.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

It'd taken them seventeen minutes to get everyone in position. Now it was time for phase two. "Price, I've got Toad and Angel, and we're in position to provide overwatch. Ready to take out the snipers stationed on your go."

" _Alright. Langley, you're in position?_ "

" _We're ready to run._ "

"Toad, take the look out in the third story window. Angel, you get the one in the fourth. I've got the guy on the roof." As MacTavish said this, he peered through his scope and set his sights on his designated target who was currently kicking a bit of snow off the ledge.

" _Soap, take them out._ "

With that single order, the three expertly took out the enemy snipers. "They're down."

" _I copy. Charlie Team, you're up,_ " Price told them.

" _Charlie Team moving up._ "

MacTavish scanned over the windows just to be sure there were no other possible threats at this time, which was a fortunate no. He turned his attention to Charlie Team as they approached the building. They ran straight through the playground and got to the side of the building.

" _We've touched base. Rounding to the North side to go up the fire escape._ "

"Copy that. Crane, do you have eyes on the North?"

" _Affirmative. I have eyes on the fire escape._ "

Once Langley and co were out of sight, MacTavish took a deep breath. So far so good. There were no road bumps yet. Finally he sat up. "Toad, fall back. You're taking a seat on the chopper with Buck."

Toad pulled his eyes from his scope and sat up. "Yes, sir." He picked up his sniper rifle next and got to his feet.

" _Charlie Team, hold. I spot two tangos by a window one floor above you,_ " Crane reported.

" _Wait for them to pass,_ " Price advised.

" _Copy. Holding position,_ " Langley replied.

MacTavish tapped the trigger guard as he waited in silence. Each second felt like hours. Crane gave them the all clear after a minute and a half. This was progress.

-()-()-()-

14:28...

Ghost looked around at the children, their disheartened faces. He couldn't blame them. "So... y'might think that that was the end of ol' Riley's story. But in reality it was only the begi- HEY!"

The moment he shouted at black jacket (fuck black jacket, fucking asshole), the terrorist stopped staring at one of the young girls and gave him a look of surprise.

"Hey, moleface, prom's not for months yet," Ghost said, irritated more than anything. Keeping a bunch of children's attention was one thing, adults with an agenda was something completely different. And here black jacket was creeping on a god damn seventh grader. "I know I ain't no _Charlie fuckin' Dickens_ , but I didn't think I was _boring_."

It was more than enough of a crazy statement to get the attention back onto him.

"Where was I?" He took a dramatically long pause to look like he was thinking it over. "...Oh yeah. So Riley was trapped down there, with the maggots..."

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Charlie Team reached the roof, they'd have to hold position until they had the signal. No one would fire a single shot until it was time. Phase three, get Price's team into position...

" _Soap, we're advancing on the school now._ "

"Angel and I have eyes on." It was simple. They just had to wait in the first floor where it should still be clear. Hide if they had to. They'd spring into action same time as Langley. MacTavish watched Price open the same window Ghost had gotten in through and file in with Gridlock and Marlin.

They'd be hard pressed to spread themselves any thinner than they already were. He hoped they wouldn't have to.

" _We're inside. No tangos in sight._ " A faint tapping sound came from Price's mic. " _Langley, signal Gregory._ "

"On it." Up on the roof, Langley pulled out a small white light and gave it a couple of flashes. Off to the side, MacTavish spotted the two return flashes before Sgt. Gregory's squad made their intentionally more obvious advance through the playground.

-()-()-()-

14:32...

"Andrij! I saw something move!" Brown jacket exclaimed, pulling off his mask. A very messy head of red hair popped out. "There! By the play yard. I though I saw figures."

That was the signal. Ghost smirked under his mask. They were all in position.

"Call Viktor, tell him to be ready," Andrij ordered.

Brown jacket stared out the window. "Oh, god. This is it."

"Get a hold of yourself." Andrij put a hand on the younger's shoulder. "Bring me one of the children."

Couldn't let that happen. "You two are like a pair of old grannies." This was enough to get them to take their attention off the window and back on him. "They're soldiers. Y'don't get the TV cameras without 'em. It's their job to maneuver here and there. Ya have your hostages. There's no way even a single one of them OPs boys are getting in here."

Both terrorists gave him frustrated looks now. Maybe if the story wasn't so engaging then they would have shut him up.

"Now, let me get to it before we run out of time. Riley had just discovered his entire family'd been slaughtered. Except for his dear old dad, that is, but as it were you can only imagine the _rage_ and _grief_ he felt. But there was _another feeling_. One that scared the hell out of Riley. One that made him question everything."

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

The signal had been sent. Ghost should know they were ready to go. MacTavish tapped his gun as a frown worked its way to his face. Now it was just a matter of waiting for his.

Any minute now...

"Come on, Ghost... "

"Think he ran into trouble?" Angel asked him, keeping an attentive eye on the building.

MacTavish bit the inside of his cheek. "He better not have."

Price then chimed in, " _He'll be fine, Soap._ "

"We shouldn't be cutting it so close on time."

" _Granted, but if he's not in position to give the signal then we need to wait until he is._ "

-()-()-()-

14:43...

"...So, what was Riley going to do? The BBC called him 'the most dangerous man in Britain.' His family was dead. His commander was dead. He didn't know how deep the conspiracy went or who to trust... And them two bastards that killed his loved ones were holed up at R.A.F. Bonnington, which is a joint American and British air base. It's none too easy a place to get inside. They've got a triple barbed wire perimeter fence, twenty four hour satellite sur-"

Suddenly the door opened, causing most of the terrorists to jump with alarm. At the door stood Viktor, a shotgun in hand which he pumped for emphasis. "The soldiers are taking up positions. Prepare yourselves, comrades. In a quarter hour we will have to prove to them that we are patriots."

"Right..." Ghost rolled his eyes and turned his attention straight back to the others. The children were all looking expectantly at him to continue the story. Slowly, he worked his hands around enough to find the zipper on his sleeve. With one even motion, he snapped it off, masking the sound with more of his chatter. "...Well... yeah. The two right bastards were holed up in the air base, thinkin' they were safe as babes. Thinkin' Riley was dead. On that account they were right. All that he was, everything he held dead, was gone. There weren't no Riley anymore. Just a dead man. A dead man with a mission."

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

"What the hell is he doing?" MacTavish glared at the building at this point. It was getting closer and closer to the deadline. "We got less than twenty minutes before they kill the first hostage."

" _If a kid dies and he still hasn't given the signal, what then?_ " Gridlock asked over the comms.

The question was met with Price's dry response. " _We'll just have to storm_ _the_ _place, now won't we?_ "

" _We still don't know what room they're holding the hostages..._ " Angel remarked.

" _Eh... We didn't see 'em coming up the fire escape,_ " Langley stated. " _They have to be on the South side._ "

This was starting to look bleak...

-()-()-()-

14:53...

Ghost worked the snapped end of the zipper against the rope he kept talking, steadily sawing through it. This process turned out to be way more time consuming than he first anticipated. "So Coahula - hell, all of the Northern Mexico - was a war zone. Since the yanks couldn't kill El Gordo, they'd gone after the other cartels hoping they'd get Roba. Women n' children gettin' caught in the crossfire-"

As he said this, one of the boys started crying. He whimpered, causing a fair few of his classmates to give him nervous looks.

"Alright, folks, I see you sweatin' the clock," Ghost told them, looking directly at the crying boy. "Just stay calm, son. Listen to the story. And it's gonna be okay."

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Three o'clock.

MacTavish felt his mouth go dry as he read the time on his watch. They hit the deadline.

Why the hell wasn't Ghost doing anything?

" _Sir, we need a new plan-_ "

" _Easy, Marlin. Not yet._ " Price paused. " _They haven't executed anyone._ "

MacTavish felt something in him snap. "Price, I don't think we can wait any _longer_ , if they haven't killed a kid now then they're probably just about to-"

" _Alright, alright, Soap. I hear you, son, no need to shout. Just keep your head, we got this._ "

"But, Price, this is getting out of-"

This time he was cut off by a gun shot ringing in the air. He quickly looked over every window above the first floor, and spotted one that was splattered in red. As soon as it happened, it sent an entire chain reaction into motion. Angel directed Langley's team to the windows where the blood spatter happened, then they hooked up and rappelled inside, busting open the windows. Price's team charged up the stairs, cleared the second floor and then advanced to the third. The chopper banked around to the South side of the building to provide any coverage they could since the rest of the sniper team lacked elevation to see into the room.

" _I spy a hostile with one of the kids. Taking the shot._ " Toad reported.

It all happened so fast. He heard the first "We're clear" from Langley, followed by Price confirming that the fourth and final floor was cleared as well.

MacTavish released a breath he didn't even know he was holding. He then set down his sniper rifle and flopped backwards into the snow, earning a concerned look from Angel. "Sir? You okay?"

"I'm just fine..." He sighed and rubbed his face. "Any causalities?"

" _Negative,_ " Langley answered. " _One of the children has a sprained ankle and a teacher's missing a bit of his ear, but that's about it._ "

"And Ghost," MacTavish dared to ask.

He was met with a laugh. " _Ghost's fine, he's carrying the kid. Gator's looking for his headset now._ "

Some minutes later, everyone regrouped, and MacTavish got a good look at the trail of blood that leaked down from Ghost's temple, staining a little bit of his balaclava. Some of the area was turning various shades of purple now, and the swelling at the corner of his eye made it close a little. Beyond that, he was unharmed.

No one seriously hurt, and no one dead. MacTavish couldn't scoff at those results.

On their way back to the helicopter though, Price patted him on the shoulder and said in low voice for no one else to hear, "We need to have a talk once we get back to base."

MacTavish felt a flutter of worry. "Alright, Captain."

-()-()-()-

Once the Task Force returned to base, Price went ahead and did his normal post mission tasks: drop off extra equipment at the armory, mentally prepare for a lot of paperwork, get a debriefing ready... Once he had a moment though, he took time to idle in the office and have a much needed smoke.

While Price took a long drag off his cigar, Soap walked in, likely having done all the same post mission tasks. The younger gave him an uncertain look as he shut the door and leaned against it. "You wanted to talk, old man?"

"I did," Price confirmed, tapping the end of his cigar against the ash tray on the desk. "What the bloody hell was that out there? You can't lose your head in the field like that, Soap."

Soap didn't meet his eyes. Instead his gaze was fixed on the floor. The thought of several different responses visibly showed on his face as he searched for some answer to give. "...You're right, I shouldn't 've. The deadline hit and I panicked."

Hearing this, Price took another drag off his cigar and hummed. "You need to learn to handle the stress. I know it's hard, but it's your job as a Captain to be level headed."

What he hoped would be a fair lesson was met with a bitter, "Price, do you ever think I'm just not cut out to _be_ a Captain?"

"You up and jump-stepped from a Sergeant to effectively a _Lieutenant_ in the span of a little over _half a year_. Hell, you passed Selection and they made you a whole rank higher than everyone else who does. That doesn't just happen." Price gave him a careful look. "You're a capable soldier, and there's no denying that. There's something else though, you show a whole lot of promise and that's what the higher ups are all betting on."

"That doesn't exactly answer my question," Soap sighed.

"It's not supposed to. Whether or not I believe you'll make a good leader's irrelevant. It's whether you can learn to be a good one and put forth that effort that's important." He puffed out a bit of smoke and continued, "You're not ready to be a Captain all on your own yet, but you're learning."

Soap gave a small nod. "Is that all you called me here for?"

"You're not in trouble, if that's what you're getting at. All I ask is that you go get some rest and try to keep your wits next time." With that, Price put out his cigar and approached the door the younger was still propped against. Soap stepped away from it as he neared. Price took hold of the handle and shook his head. "I'm here to help you, son. There's no shame in that."

"I know."

There was nothing else to say. Price left with a faint concern still present in the back of his mind. Was this too much pressure on the young man? If so, when would he crack?

* * *

And that concludes another chapter. I know that my updates have been sporadic. There's not really any good excuse for it, since I technically have five additional chapters after this one already written. I just like having the extra material ready in advance because it gives me more chances to go back and fix things before I publish them - and believe me, there have been changes. While I won't discuss those changes yet, since they all are with way later chapters, I'm bound to when they come up.  
For this chapter though, we got the Ghost comics unfolding. I realize I pretty much took what happened in the comics verbatim, but I did try and put my own spin on it with the POV hopping back and forth to show what was going on with the rest of the team. Hopefully this doesn't come across as too confusing.  
Another tidbit was towards the end, where I explain what the deal is with Soap being a Captain when he was basically a Sergeant earlier that year. It's a crazy promotion, and when I actually thought about that, it was well after the first chapter had been posted and I didn't want to retcon anything. So instead, I do my best to justify the action. Basically, for now, although MacTavish's rank is Captain, he acts as a Lieutenant and Second in Command to Price. I realize this isn't how that works, but same can be said for Shepherd being an Army General having control of Marines (no, CoD never explains that one) or the EMP in the second game blowing up the international space station. I love you guys, but this is fanfiction. I promise though that I haven't abandoned all logic. :)


	7. A Fateless Night

In the days following their return from Ukraine, Ghost found himself the subject of Credenhill's rumor mill. Word spread pretty fast of his ballsy gambit, and parts of the story got exaggerated to their logical extremes as a result: how he slipped into class with the hostages before getting taken down, took out every terrorist in the room before Langley and the others could rappel in, somehow stalled them a half hour past deadline... The list went on.

One of the more amusing things, which he sadly missed out on, was MacTavish apparently losing his cool over the comms about how long he was stalling. That particular rumor warped into a joke that MacTavish may even just straight up have a thing for the Lieutenant. At least, Ghost hoped it was a joke. If it wasn't, then this got out of hand.

In precisely three days, Price caught wind of the rumors and had everyone gather up outside in the cold so he could lecture them on being a bunch of "chatty bastards" for approximately an hour. No further punishment. He didn't try to find who started the rumors, just dismissed everyone with the promise that "Next time, whoever starts rumors like this again will be stuck doing training with MacTavish." Nobody wanted to do even half of the fitness madman's regiment, so the rumors were deader than a door nail.

All this led up to now. Ghost gathered up his keys and wallet from the desk in his dorm. He and Langley had plotted a night on the town after that assembly, since neither of them would be on duty tomorrow. They'd hang out at one of the pubs in Hereford, discuss the mission, find a place to crash, and head back to the base the next morning with hopefully not too bad a hangover.

First part went over pretty well. Langley directed him to this little under spoken joint with a rustic appeal. The lights from inside cast a warm glow in the chilled December night. Each time the door swung open, classic rock wafted out along with the lively sounds of laughter and conversation. Ghost couldn't help but smile as he drank in the atmosphere on their way to the bar.

Langley cast a dimpled grin as he took a seat. "Is that a genuine smile there, mate?"

Ghost rolled his eyes. "Maybe." He turned his attention to the bartender. "Gin, please." He tapped his foot to the beat of _Killer Queen_.

"Pint of stout for me," Langley added. While they waited for their drinks, he nudged Ghost. "Sooo, how'd you keep those guys distracted so long? You were in there a whole hour."

Ghost shrugged. "I just was telling stories, tried to be engaging."

"You ought to write a book if you can grab their attention in a situation like that," Langley remarked.

He couldn't help but laugh. Him an author? Maybe in another life. At that time, they got their drinks, and Ghost downed about half the small glass.

"What kind of story were you telling them?"

"Oh, just some old war stories from my days in the SAS. I did _a lot_ of embellishing though." That much was true. He painted himself to sound like an action hero, played up the fighting a lot... In truth, his survival was largely due to his own caution and quiet approach. He didn't once try to tackle a problem guns ablaze. When it was all said and done, he didn't earn his nickname because he killed his old self. Shepherd called him Ghost because he evaded capture on a manhunt and snuck into a military base largely undetected.

He wouldn't tell Langley any of that though. He didn't have to. The simple answer he provided was more than enough for his comrade, who bumped his shoulder. "Trying to impress the little girls? That blonde one really took a shining to you."

"It must have been a very impressive story then."

 _You've got to be fucking with me..._ Ghost prayed he didn't just hear that in the voice he heard it. Pinching himself and slamming back the rest of his glass didn't change anything though. When he turned around, he saw MacTavish approach them. Ghost forced a smile and gave a very dry laugh. "Captain... What are you doing here?"

"Same as you," he answered, taking a seat next to him. "I haven't kept you two waiting long, have I?"

Ghost stood up. "Ah ha ha, I've already had so much to drink, I should be going!" He fished around in his pocket for his wallet, only to find it alarmingly missing. That started a self pat down in his desperation to find it.

Langley gave Ghost a confused look, then leaned a little to look at MacTavish while his dorm mate was having a mini crisis between them. "No, we haven't been here long. I don't know what Ghost's going on about having a lot to drink, but we haven't."

"Is he a cheap date?" MacTavish wondered.

"I'm not!"

"Then no need to make a scene, Ghost. Sit back down. I can spot you a few drinks," MacTavish declared, pulling the lankier man back down onto the stool. "Oi, two whiskeys!"

Somewhere deep down, Ghost was internally screaming. He leaned over to Langley and whispered, "Did you invite him?"

"Yeah, mate. 'Course I did." Langley gave a knowing wink while he tipped back his beer glass.

 _That damn traitor_. He was dimly aware of two shot glasses half full of amber liquid being set in front of them. "You could've given me a warning."

"I know you're busy plotting your escape and all, Ghost," the Captain chimed in, "but there's something you should probably know."

"What?" Ghost asked in a tone about as cold as the wind chill outside.

MacTavish pointed down at the counter. "You're wallet's right there."

It took every ounce of his willpower not to explode. With a deep breath, he took the wallet and pushed it into his coat pocket. "So it is..."

Langley listened to the two of them with an even smile as he continued to enjoy his beer. "Come on, Ghost, lighten up. You're acting like you don't like Captain MacTavish's company."

Ghost gave Langley a withering glare. If anyone knew Ghost's frustration about the guy, it was Langley. He sat through so many of Ghost's mini tirades in their dorm. Could get him at the very least an NJP if he told them half the shit he said. Hell, this could be it right here. All it took was Langley's hinting. He was done for.

Instead of questions though, MacTavish gave a hearty laugh. "I already know he loathes me, Langley! Let's not go on teasing him about it."

Ghost shook his head and picked up the shot glass, knocking back its contents. "I hate you all..."

"There's Cranky Ghost," MacTavish noted with a grin. "You're a lot less fun when you try and act nice."

"I didn't realize I was acting nice to be _fun_ , Captain." Ghost signaled for another drink.

Langley listened with a smirk, steadily draining his glass. He wasn't much for conversation, something Ghost had initially liked about the man. Now he wished more than anything that he could step up and keep their very social Captain occupied so he wouldn't have to.

Of course, there was one way he could think of that could prove entertaining for himself. "Say, Captain? Just how good even is your tolerance?"

With furrowed brows, MacTavish pondered the question. "Decent. Why do you ask?"

"Because you've been sipping that little glass like hot tea," Ghost pointed out.

"I'm pacing myself. You on the other hand-" He pinched Ghost's cheek. "-are blushing like a bride."

The pinch drew a small shout from Ghost before he swatted his hand away. "I've had two drinks in about fifteen minutes. Get on my level."

"Is that a challenge?"

"Think you can drink me under the table?"

"Ghost, I know I can."

"You're on."

-()-()-()-

After approximately ten extra shots of whiskey each, the two were more than toasted. Langley watched somewhere between concern and uncertainty as they swayed in their stools, arms locked around each other, loudly singing along to the radio. He wasn't the only one staring at this point. The bartender seemed to have a hard time paying any semblance of attention to his other patrons, not that any of those blokes seemed to mind with the provided entertainment.

Sooner or later, they had to get kicked out of this place, right?

"I'm burnin' through the sky, yeah!" Ghost hung his head back as he sang along. "Two hundred degrees! That's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit!"

"I'm traveling at the speed of liiight!" Out of nowhere, MacTavish gave Ghost a bit of a shove, knocking the other off balance and to the floor. "I wanna make a supersonic man outta you!"

Where Langley worried that his friend may have been hurt, Ghost only laughed as he dragged himself up to his feet. There was a lack of coordination to his movements as he slapped his hand on the counter and grabbed the Captain by the back of his shirt. It was hard for him to get the next few lines out between his fit of laughter, which of course led to the Captain laughing hysterically and their "show" coming to an end as neither could keep their composure enough to carry on.

While MacTavish had his head down on the counter and Ghost's on the Captain's shoulder, both laughing their asses off, Langley fished out his wallet and paid for the drinks, as well as made sure he tipped the bartender handsomely for the trouble. He was pretty glad now with his decision to cut himself off after that first drink and stick to water and crisps. There was no way these two were in any condition to drive. "Alright you two, coats on. Let's get you somewhere not public."

"B-but I drove here," MacTavish said between giggles. He started fishing around in his pocket, and pulled out a car key, which he just simply held up in the air and seemed to simply forget to put his hand back down.

"You're not getting behind the wheel. I'll deal with the car later." Langley took the key from him and stashed it in his coat. "Come on. Get up."

With a sigh, MacTavish got up. The word 'graceful' never came to Langley's mind to describe the Captain in the past, but seeing the heavy, dragging way he stood and shrugged on his coat certainly made him notice now. With him getting ready, Langley could turn his attention to his dorm mate.

"Alright, Ghost, get your coat." He looked over at his friend, who sat back down during all this, and hauled him up to his feet. "Coat. On."

"But it's _cold_ outside," Ghost huffed.

"Yes. It is. We need to go outside to get in the car." Why'd he let them both drink themselves stupid?

Ghost pouted in a very teenage girl sort of way and begrudgingly got his coat on. "Why don't we just go into the car?"

"That's what we're going to do, Ghost." Langley sighed, then turned back to MacTavish. "Get back up, Captain."

This game of trying to get them both ready to leave carried on another six minutes. Between one of them sitting down when Langley turned his back, then suddenly Ghost having to piss and then MacTavish having to piss, and MacTavish forgetting that Langley took his keys, it was a miracle it didn't take longer. After what felt like an uphill battle, he had them both in the back seat of the car, buckled in (he hoped), and Ghost finally stopped complaining about the lack of leg room. Langley sank into the car seat and rubbed his hands over his face. He really needed to rethink this designated driver role he adopted.

After his small moment of peace, he started the car. The moment the radio kicked in, both Ghost and MacTavish were back to their off key singing. At least it kept them preoccupied...

Fortunately for Langley, his flatmate off base was away on a vacation to the U.S. for the holidays, so he could avoid any questions on why two very drunk men would be sleeping in Langley's room. After ushering them inside, getting them to take off their shoes at the door (easier said than done), and take off their coats, Langley corralled them into his room and left to walk back down to the bar so that the car MacTavish drove in could be parked closer. That was a fifteen minute walk filled with anxiety over the fact he left two heavily intoxicated men in his flat unsupervised. Once he got the car in front of the complex using his flatmate's currently empty space, he hung out in the living room nearby in case anything happened.

Of course, something did. Those two actually started talking while he was gone. At first it was light hearted, silly conversation. Langley disregarded it. At some point though, the conversation turned to Christmas coming up. MacTavish was going on about how he'd have to drive up North to meet with the old man for midnight mass when suddenly he cut himself off. "You alright, mate?"

"It's been... what...? A year now...?"

Langley sat up and looked at the door. This was new.

"A year?"

"Since my family all got killed," Ghost answered. "They'd been murdered... What kinda sick bastard shoots a kid?"

Suddenly Langley felt a tad sick. A month ago when he met Ghost, he learned that the subject of his family was something closed off for discussion. Langley never pried after the first rebuff, and over time lost interest in the subject. Apparently there was a lot more to things than he realized.

"Ghooost... it sounds stupid, but you got us now. It doesn't replace anybody or fix what's happened, but you're not alone."

This was met with a few sobs and then quiet hushing. Langley went to the door and peeked in. Ghost had his head buried in MacTavish's shoulder, his hands clutching the back of his shirt as he swore under his breath. The Captain rubbed small circles between the other man's shoulders, decidedly misty eyed himself. Just as quickly as he looked in, Langley shut the door and went to go throw some headphones on and crash on the couch.

-()-()-()-

Ghost groaned as he slowly came to at... maybe 04:00? He couldn't be sure. All he knew was that his head was pounding, and his stomach was very much upset. His body was sore, radiated with stinging pain along his back and chest, and his dick may as well have gone through a blender with how much it hurt. There was also a bit of a breeze that he was not at all in favor of.

Slowly, he cracked open his eyes and came to the realization that he was very much naked. Or mostly; his shirt was hiked up to his armpits and one sock still hung halfway off his foot, but the rest was alarmingly missing. Next to him, crammed on this little twin bed, was MacTavish, pretty much naked as well save for what was likely his underpants hanging off his ankle. To make matters worse, Ghost couldn't help but notice an unsettling mix of dry fluids and maybe blood on his groin, the other man's ass... A bit more dried something or other coated MacTavish's cock. Maybe spit. Maybe semen. He wasn't sure.

Being uncomfortable with the situation would be a gross understatement. Ghost climbed out of the very much unfamiliar bed (where the hell even were they?) and grabbed his pants before leaving the room to search for the toilet.

Langley was passed out on the couch with headphones blaring so loud that Ghost could hear the music from a few meters away. Maybe it was a good sign. Maybe not. He didn't dare wake Langley up though.

For the next fifteen minutes, he locked himself in the tiny room, head rested against the toilet seat, as he went between being too weak to move and dry heaving. The reality of the situation sunk in.

He fucked his Captain.  
Correction: He fucked MacTavish.

With that, Ghost thought long and hard about how this even came to pass. He definitely recalled the bar, challenging MacTavish to a drinking contest, about eight rounds of that just fine. After that it went from hazy to absolutely nothing. He could only hope that MacTavish was in a similar state and therefore wouldn't be able to recall the details either.

Finally Ghost managed to climb to his feet and head to the bedroom again. Fortunately, the Captain hadn't woken up yet. He took this as a chance to dress himself properly. His shirt rubbed uncomfortably against a large array of scratches on his torso that he definitely didn't have yesterday and his dick felt like someone gave it an Indian sunburn, but he would just have to live with it.

When Ghost finally sat down on the floor by the bed, MacTavish started to wake up...

* * *

It's been a while, and I'm sorry about the wait. The plot starts to go places from here and there's a lot of romantic development. I wanted to make sure that I was satisfied with my writing before I go back to posting new chapters. I have an additional ten chapters written after this one, and all of them will be posted eventually.  
This chapter was incredibly fun to write. I got a chance to share drinking stories with friends, have a few myself, and get inspiration for Soap and Ghost's antics. There's plenty more drinking scenes to be had, I assure you.  
Thank you all for the support so far!


	8. Mistakes were Made

If there was anything MacTavish thought he could be sure of, it was his own sexuality. Even if he didn't go out of his way to pick up girls or gawk at them, he liked to think he was straight. That fell well in line with his Catholic upbringing. Between a priest who went out of his way to rant on the evils of sodomy and his dad who simply didn't support homosexuality, he had no reason to even consider men. When he was young, he feared it as sinful. Nowadays sin didn't scare him all that much, he'd already resigned himself to the fact that he was probably going to hell. His main aversion to being gay turned to it being more or less taboo in the military when he first enlisted.

That was before he woke up naked with his ass absolutely burning and next to no recollection of last night after arriving to the pub. He at least knew he was heavily hungover.

There was the dimmest glimmer of a memory though, of lips dragging down his stomach and sighed words that sent a shiver down his spine. Who was it? Langley was the most sober one there, it couldn't be him. Ghost...?  
Ridiculous. The man hated him.

MacTavish sat up, his head pounding. In an effort to alleviate the pain, he rubbed at his forehead. He had to get dressed, had to figure out where he was... Both of these were difficult. At the very least, his boxer briefs were still kind of on him, so he was able to cover himself in short order. He set himself to the task of collecting the rest of his scattered clothing on the floor.

His hand stopped as it found a very familiar skull mask under his shirt.

"Maybe you should take it easy, Captain-"

Without a word, MacTavish threw the mask back at Ghost and finished getting dressed. As soon as he was, he made a beeline for the door.

"Hey, where are you going?"

There wasn't an answer, not even a look back his way. He left the room, located his shoes and coat at the front door, then exited the flat. Next, the complex. His car was in the parking lot, though he couldn't remember driving to this place, and fished for his keys in his pocket.

They weren't there.

A more thorough search of his pants and coat revealed that his keys weren't on his person, and he concluded Langley hopefully took them at some point while he was blackout drunk. With one look at the complex, the Captain determined that he wouldn't go back inside to get them. That would mean having to confront Ghost if he did.

Instead he sat by his car in the cold. It wasn't a good plan, but without his keys there was no going anywhere. Well, unless he walked... however long a walk back to base that would be.

After about ten minutes to consider the situation, he heard the crunch of feet over the thin carpet of snow. Ghost leaned against the side of the car. "Look, I know I'm not anyone's first choice, but you didn't need to storm off."

"Can you not?" MacTavish grunted, crossing his arms to his chest. "I don't want to talk about it."

"What are you? Ten? It happened. Be a gent and at least help me figure out what this means." Ghost looked down at him, a frustrated frown and his eyes a touch bloodshot.

"It doesn't mean anything. We were drunk." He had no clue what drunk him was thinking, but he clearly wasn't on the same page. "I'm straight, Ghost. End of story."

"Yeah. We were drunk. I don't remember a thing, maybe you don't either, we can just forget it happened," Ghost concluded.

"It still _happened_..." MacTavish shook his head. "I'll stop getting in your space. You win."

Ghost looked more or less perplexed. "It doesn't mean a thing, but it still happened. What's that supposed to mean?"

MacTavish got up and marched away. He'd figure out where he was eventually. He had all day to work it out. Just, for now, he needed to be alone.

"Where are you going?!" Ghost shouted after him.

There was no effort to physically stop him, so he kept walking. Soon Ghost's voice faded off into the distance as he found himself back on the main road. From there he made an educated guess to go left and follow the road for a while. His thoughts remained fixed on the implications of what that night could have meant, of what very little he could actually remember.

-()-()-()-

The prospect of having MacTavish out of his hair should have been a victory, all things considered. Ghost should have been happy with this result. He finally got that damned asshole off his back. He _won_.

Did he though? It was a pyrrhic victory at best. What was the price of winning? This wasn't normal behavior from the Captain. Were things going to change now between them? Something about that deeply troubled him. Whatever it was, it made Ghost's chest ache as he watched MacTavish walk away down the lamp lit street in the dim of early morning. Whatever it was drove him to punch the hood of his car and kick up some snow on his way back into Langley's flat.

Langley didn't ask a whole lot of questions. All he needed to hear was that MacTavish had left early and concluded that if he didn't show up on base by noon then they should worry. Ghost had to drive the other car back to the base in the meantime. He had to sit in a car that smelled of deodorant and cheap air freshener, with a little metal cross hanging off the rear view mirror, a cluster of letters left stacked on the dashboard, and a three ring binder full of papers sitting in the back seat. It was all pretty standard for any one person's vehicle. At least until he reached a red light and took his foot off the gas to scratch the back of his leg. Ghost's heel connected with some plastic bag under the driver's seat and knocked loose three nip bottles of whiskey that rolled down to the pedals.

Ghost gawked at them for several seconds before he quickly gathered them back up and pulled the bag out from under the seat to replace them. Inside said bag was at least another twenty or so. "Oh bloody hell..." he said under his breath. A honk sounded behind him and he snapped his head up to find the light was green. It wasn't until he returned to base and parked the car that he pushed the bag back underneath. He dropped the keys off at the Captains' office shortly thereafter, putting an end to that one problem.

Later that day, MacTavish did make it back to the base in one piece. Though he must've left his soul at the gate, because he seemed to operate on pure muscle memory. This worked well enough, since he seemed to funnel all his energy into his lengthy training process. Ghost happened to be outside, happened to be watching from his smoking spot. The man was seemingly limitless; he blazed through the obstacle course and afterwards he up and went straight to running laps with little more than a minute of rest.

 _Is he trying to kill himself with all this?_ Ghost took an absent drag off his cigarette and kept watching. He came to two conclusions: MacTavish either was incredibly good at ignoring fatigue or simply had godlike stamina, and his endurance pace was a normal man's sprint. If he didn't know better, he wouldn't believe that the Captain had been out drinking at all last night.

An odd thing happened though as MacTavish finally came to a stop. He went to lean against a post, then slid down to the ground. There was no pace around between the run and him sitting. Any medic would tell you never do that, since it causes blood pressure to drop and leads to fainting. A fitness nut like him should know better, so why do exactly that? Ghost watched for a couple minutes longer before putting out his cigarette and leaving. It wasn't his job to care.

That night, while Ghost lay quietly in his bunk waiting to fall asleep, Langley said from somewhere above him, "You know, I heard Captain MacTavish passed out on the o-course today."

"Did he now?" Ghost replied, trying to sound as bored and uninterested as he could manage. MacTavish could make his own stupid decisions. He could be an idiot for all he cared. It didn't matter anymore.

"Yeah, they dragged Doc out there and everything," Langley added. "...Ghost? Did something happen between you two last night? This doesn't feel right."

He frowned and turned on his side to face the wall. He couldn't let himself believe that this was his fault. "Nothing happened, mate. The Captain's just an idiot who overworked himself on a hangover..." As much as he wanted to believe that he wasn't guilty, his dreams liked to spin things a bit differently.

The following days weren't any better. He hated to admit it, but MacTavish somehow managed to be even more annoying by avoiding him than he did constantly getting in his space. The Lieutenant was used to the man's presence by now, and to have it suddenly be absent was enough to make focusing difficult. The worst part by far was whenever they had to speak to each other, the Captain's tone was flat, his gaze averted. What respect Ghost had built for the man was entirely on his consistent and easily predictable behavior. He became a constant to Ghost, who placed trust that he'd always be annoyingly friendly. Like every other constant in Ghost's life, he lost it in a blink of an eye.

And when Price caught on to the abnormal behavior? Forget it. It was like being tailed by a bloodhound at that point. Price watched every little thing when something caught his attention, even such small details as where MacTavish would look in the mess hall. Ghost could feel the older Captain's eyes bore into the back of his skull. Maybe he should fear for his life.

So now he had a moping Captain to deal with and a potentially angry Captain just slowly boiling over on the sidelines on top of that. By day four of this bullshit, Ghost found he couldn't even sleep. Without the mental capacity to fully handle the situation, he turned to the tried and not so reliable tactic of ignoring the problem till it went away. It wasn't working and he still couldn't sleep.

A week after this all began, Price confronted him. "Did something happen to make Soap avoid you?"

Ghost had no clue how to answer. The truth would completely ruin them both. "You could say that..."

Sensing his reluctance, Price pushed Ghost off to a quiet area behind a staircase. "Alright, this is a blind spot as far as cameras are concerned. This stays between us. Now what is it?"

Ghost scuffed his shoe against the tile, finding it more or less impossible to focus on one thing in his mind. "See uh, we got really, really drunk and, well... some things... happened. I haven't been able to get him to talk to me since."

Price scratched his chin as he considered the issue. "So you two are friends of Mrs. King?"

"... No...?" Ghost glanced around the corner at the camera before propping himself against the wall. "What are you getting at?"

"It's before your time, I guess. Anyway, I thought for sure Soap wasn't into tall, dark, and brooding."

"...Yeah... we were _really_ drunk..." Ghost mumbled.

Price gave a sagely nod. "If you ask me, seems he's more having an identity crisis than anything against you. So what about you then?"

Ghost frowned. "What about me?"

"How do you feel about the whole thing?"

The answer wasn't readily apparent to Ghost. He'd been so distracted by MacTavish's sudden shift in attitude that he simply didn't consider his own feelings. "I think he's way more annoying giving me the cold shoulder than he was always getting on my back."

"That's not what I mean, Ghost," Price stated.

"I don't know, okay?" He admitted, frustration leaking into his voice. His own sexual preference was an issue he carefully avoided since last year. After all the hell he went through in Mexico, he could safely say he didn't trust himself to get close to any woman for fear that he would be as awful to them as he was in his nightmares. It wasn't so much that they were fragile, it was that he was warped. Men though? "It's not like I'm interested in him. It's just that I thought I understood how he works, and now he's acting like this and I hate it. It's stupid, but he offered structure."

"Then you have to tell him that."

Even if there was truth to that, Ghost couldn't help but ask, "Can't you just talk to him? He listens to you."

"Sure, he listens to me, but what do either of you learn from that?" He jabbed Ghost on the chest. "You've got to face the problem head on, and he's going to have to listen whether he wants to or not."

And if he couldn't? Price refused to answer that. He left Ghost to figure it out. What the old Captain failed to take into account was when Ghost had to figure something like this out, he sat on the problem. A poor plan would only make the situation worse, so he agonized over his options. In the meantime, the rest of the month flew by and MacTavish still continued to give him the cold shoulder the whole time. Each day was a reminder that things were still messed up, and somehow it was up to him to fix it.

-()-()-()-

 _"I don't want to let anyone close... They won't like what they see. They won't like me."_

 _He tipped his head, the motion heavy with his drunken state. "I like you."_

 _Ghost gave a dry laugh. "You've gotta be taking a_ _piss_ _..."_

 _"I mean it, mate, I do."_ _MacTavish_ _leaned in_ _closer_ _now, till he could smell the alcohol heavy on Ghost's breath. "Why would I try so hard if I didn't?"_

 _"Prove it then."_

 _With that, he did the first thing he could think of to validate his claim. He pressed his lips over Ghost's and coiled his hand behind the other's head for a_ _demanding kiss..._

MacTavish shook his head to get his mind off the memory. With a little time, some of what happened that night came back to him. All it showed was one thing: he was the reason things ended up as they did. At first, he couldn't wrap his head around it. Why would he do that? Since Ghost arrived here, he invested so much effort trying to get the Lieutenant to open up around his comrades, but he did that to cement him into the Task Force. Right?

Maybe it was the challenge Ghost presented that quickly made the young Captain so invested. In that investment, he formed some undeniably strong feelings towards him, but he never figured that physical attraction was one of them. He thought it was a desire to be friends with him, for someone who didn't fall into a fatherly role like Price so quickly did. Now that he thought back on it, his feelings were more convoluted than that.

Yet here he was, giving Ghost a hard time. Poor man probably didn't recall any of their drunken antics, had no idea what sort of confused feelings his Captain felt towards him. Maybe it was for the best that way.

Even if it hurt his friend(?), he felt distance needed to be established for both their sakes. Clearly he was too invested in him, and the feelings that came with it were highly inappropriate for a Captain towards one of his subordinates. He had to be professional, not force himself on Ghost. Hopefully Ghost would celebrate this newfound freedom, as MacTavish anticipated.

The thought of Ghost being happy without him hurt if nothing else, but that was his cross to bear.

* * *

I'd like to thank you all for the support you've shown for this. The last month has been difficult and I've been having a hard time finding motivation to write during all of it. I've had to sit back and rethink a lot of things in my life and as a result I'm choosing a different path than what I thought I wanted to do. By no means does any of this mean I intend to stop writing the fic any time soon.  
Again, thank you all, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter.


	9. Sooner than Later

It was the 23rd. Ghost caught word from Price that MacTavish would be off the following two days to visit family for the holidays. It was for only two days, and he'd probably be back Christmas evening anyways. It wouldn't be fair to jump him with this after at least six hours of driving to get back to Hereford. It also wouldn't do well to drop that on him the day he was leaving either. It was either now or wait even longer still, and he feared Price may very well break his knee if he kept putting this off.

That evening, he located MacTavish on his way back to his quarters after dinner and approached him. "Hey, Captain, I hear you're heading home for Christmas." It wasn't enough to get him to stop walking or give a response. Ghost took a short breath and fell in step beside him. "Look, I think we need to talk this out. It's starting to get a bit out of hand."

MacTavish picked up his pace, which prompted Ghost to do the same just to stay by his side. Their speed continued to climb until they were just about running down the hall. Without even saying a word though, MacTavish came to a dead stop at the door to his room.

Having not anticipated the sudden stop, Ghost slid a few meters past him. "Oh come on, really now? You're just going to lock yourself in your room and not even say anything to me?" Before he could lose this chance, he grabbed MacTavish by the arm and pulled him from the door. "We have to talk, come on."

Ghost knew full well that MacTavish was easily stronger than him. Easily. It would have taken him zero effort to brush the Lieutenant off, even just stand in place and not move while he was being pulled. He didn't put forth any resistance though. It made it easy to get him outside to roughly that same spot he'd been dragged to a little over a month ago.

Only then did Ghost let go of his arm and say, "Okay, for fuck's sake, I get you're pissed. You can go right on ahead and tear my head off. Just quit ignoring me!"

MacTavish huffed and crossed his arms, maybe against the cold. "It doesn't feel too good when it's someone else being difficult, does it?"

"At least I gave you the time of day," Ghost retorted, "you go out of your way to _ignore me_. I get we did some dumb shit, but we were too drunk for that to be anyone's fault. Just talk to me, please. We can sort this out, but I gotta know what's going through your head."

They stood there in silence, a cold wind whistled past them and rattled the bare branches above their heads. After a minute, MacTavish asserted, "What happened between us was highly inappropriate. It made sense to distance myself."

Ghost felt his face burn when he heard this. "You bastard, don't give me that load of bollocks. Things got out of hand and you're hiding instead of actually addressing the issue!"

"This is addressing the issue," he maintained with little infliction.

"How is this fixing shit?" When no response came right away, Ghost grabbed MacTavish by the shirt collar. " _How_?"

MacTavish took hold of Ghost's hand and applied just enough pressure to get him to release his grip. "You're being irrational."

"Oh sure, _I'm_ the irrational one here. Pull your head out of your arse for a minute, would you?" Ghost clasped MacTavish's hand in his, squeezing his fingers tightly. "Yeah, I thought you were annoying, but at least you were consistent about it!"

It was enough to draw some form of a reaction from him, a baffled look. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You cared, or at least you acted like you did. You're the one who tried to treat me like something besides a soldier, remember? That was all you!" Ghost grit his teeth, too angry to feel the biting wind that brushed over them. "I'm not asking for you to change and fuck me or anything. You're straight, that's fine. I don't even know if I like men anyways. I just want this stupid thing to die and things to go back to normal."

MacTavish didn't say anything at first. He simply looked from their hands, his own tightly held in Ghost's, up to the Lieutenant's reddened face. He gave a quiet, uneasy chuckle. "Didn't realize you felt so strongly about me, Ghost." Ghost opened his mouth to retort, but MacTavish added quickly, "I'm sorry. It's just confusing right now... That night, I instigated it. You didn't think I cared and I _kissed you_ for some reason or another. Now we're here."

"It doesn't bother me any, mate," Ghost reassured. "And it shouldn't bother you. We can be men about this."

"Yeah. You're right."

Relief flooded his body and he took a deep breath to calm down. "Like it never happened."

MacTavish pulled his hand from Ghost's and rubbed the back of his neck. "I'll stop avoiding you then. We'll just move on."

"Of course. One question though before we bury it; you really care about me that much?" Ghost asked, giving a grin that hopefully would lighten the mood some.

"Ghost..." He gave him a warning glare.

"Right, right, dropping it now."

-()-()-()-

Christmas Eve morning, MacTavish threw his meager knapsack in the back of his car. He was ready to drive about six hours all the way to Glasgow. It'd be a long, hopefully uneventful drive and a not much more eventful visit, if he could help it. He could already see it, his dad staring off into the distance as Bridget goes on and on about how John never writes home. She'd probably hit him upside the head with a newspaper and point out that phones exist, just like every other time he came back on leave. At least he'd _be home_ for Christmas; for a couple of years, he was stationed in Northern Ireland and simply couldn't get back for the holidays.

So he sat himself down in his car, fished out a nip bottle from under the driver's seat and downed it. With his tolerance, it would hardly do anything to him, but it would calm his nerves. After all, there would be no avoiding the highway this commute.

About halfway through his drive, he just about smacked himself. Bridget would probably be bringing that rescue dog of hers, Carlie... The huge mutt never got properly trained, so she jumped on just about anyone and tugged at the leash and barked up a storm. In short, he could see himself likely having a panic attack at best, breaking the pooch's neck at worst. He never told them about what had happened during the seven day conflict earlier this year, or his time in Birmingham recovering afterwards, or the few therapy sessions he was required to go to. They had no idea about Dr. Liu or his diagnosis that was still up in the air at this point. If MacTavish called ahead and warned Bridget to put the dog in the back room or restrain it, it'd be seen as unusual and he'd have to go explain...

Really, how do you explain to your loved ones that you might have PTSD and can't be around the family pet?

So MacTavish came to the logical conclusion that no such warning should be provided. He'd figure it out when he got there, and if worst comes to worst, he'd sit outside or something. Just like in Ireland. One thing was for sure, if he ever left the service and lived on his own (and he knew he'd live alone), he'd get a cat.  
Price had a cat, or rather Mrs. Price did. No children though. Apparently they didn't like the idea of Price leaving her to raise a kid alone while he was off fighting terror overseas.

While MacTavish stopped for gas, he tapped the roof of his car with mild impatience and thought back to the conversation with Price over the idea of a little leave time over Christmas. It hadn't entirely been MacTavish's idea, since he figured one more year on top of two wouldn't be so big a deal. Price got on his ass about how he needed to pry himself off the base every now and again to do something other than drink and that family was important, then told him he was going to see his family and that was the end of it. He even made sure that MacTavish called home just so that he knew he wouldn't just hole up in a motel for a couple of days. Later though, MacTavish overheard a heated argument Price had over the phone with his wife when he explained why he couldn't make it back for Christmas. It left a sour taste in his mouth.

At least he didn't have to worry about Ghost at this point. The problem was sorted out, his ass no longer burned like the innermost circle of hell, and he was determined to put it all behind him.

When he finally pulled up to the tiny house, he drummed his thumb against his steering wheel. Too late to back out and drive back to base. He took a deep breath, grabbed the wrapped up bottle of scotch sitting on the passenger seat, and approached the front door. Before he could even reach for the door bell, he was met with the sound of claws skittering on the wood floor inside and loud barking.

His grip on the bottle tightened as he stepped back. That dog was waiting right on the other side of the door, and MacTavish knew that the second it opened, he'd be clobbered. Training took over in that moment and he braced in anticipation.

"No, no, I got it, lass! You just get back to what you're doing," came the all too familiar voice of his old man. The door opened, and his dad gave him a pleasantly surprised smile, "Johnny?"

Before the seasoned soldier could reply, Carlie sprang out the door and trampled him in the walk way. Now, being tackled by a 43 kg German Shepherd in full gear was one thing. Carlie, a Great Dane, weighed almost twice that and MacTavish's only bit of protection was a jacket. With a shriek, he hit the ground hard, smashing both the scotch bottle and his head on the stones. The wind was thoroughly knocked out of him, and with Carlie's paws firmly planted on his sternum there was no getting any air back.

In that moment, all that rang true in MacTavish's head was that there was a barking dog on top of him. Dogs bite. Dogs are trained to go for the throat... As the dog brought its muzzle towards him, his hands fumbled to grab at its head. He'd snap its head clean to one side-

Before he could follow through with eliminating what was to him a threat, Carlie was yanked off by the collar. "Heel, girl. HEEL." Through the haziness of his vision, MacTavish made out his father staring down at him with a faint frown before shouting back, "BRIDGET! I'm chaining Carlie up outside, get the first aid kit!"

Wheezing, MacTavish tried to sit up, though was met with a sharp piercing pain when he planted his hand on the ground to push himself up. One look and he was met with the unsettling sight of glass shards stuck in his palm and fingers, blood freely flowed down to his wrist, and dirt clung to his wet skin. The alcohol only made it all sting horribly.

A hand grabbed him by the forearm and hauled his injured ass off the ground. "Come on, lad, let's get you inside. I'll clean up the mess later." No resistance came from him as he was led inside by his father and sat on the couch. With an added pat on the shoulder, his dad offered the not all too needed advice of "Keep your hand elevated. Bridget! Where are ya, lass?"

"Getting the first aid kit! Not my fault _someone_ put it on the top shelf," came a snappish reply. Bridget arrived on the scene, a white box in hand, and gasped quietly. "Johnny? Oh god! Are you okay?"

John finally managed to get his head on straight enough to formulate a response. "I'm alright..."

She went ahead and started examining his hand, clearly the worst of his injuries. Through her thick framed glasses, she took it all in and dug through the kit for a pair of tweezers. "Sorry, about that. Carlie just hasn't seen you in so long, she must've got over excited or something." His sister plucked a couple shards of glass out before glancing back up and sighing. "Hang on." She then took out a cloth, doused it in rubbing alcohol, and pressed it in his uninjured hand. "Hand on head. Now."

He did as instructed, and was met with a harsh sting as the rubbing alcohol met with what clearly was an open wound on the back of his head. "The veterinarian's assistant saves the day," he mumbled, trying not to wince as she continued to pull glass from his hand.

"And don't you forget it," Bridget returned, putting the tweezers to the side. "I gotta say, Johnny, I never heard a soldier scream like a little girl before. You should've joined the church choir. They could use more sopranists."

"You're funny, Bridget..." John deadpanned.

"Oh lighten up. It's a joke. You still remember what those are, right?" She prodded his chest. "Always so serious, I swear..."

"And what I said wasn't?" he shot back.

Bridget only rolled her eyes. "Get up, let's clean this hand up." She walked with him into the tiny kitchen, where some vegetables were left half cut on the counter and the oven was heating up. While he let the water run over his hole ridden hand, she asked, "So why was there all that glass in your hand anyways?"

"Eh... Got a bottle for dad."

"Oh good. You smell like a brewery, so I got scared that you drove here like that," she said.

John lowered the towel from his head to see the very much bloodied fabric before replacing it. "At two in the afternoon?" Truth be told, he had kept a secret stash of nip bottles in his car, but he'd never drive if he knew he was impaired. That would just about kill his career. "Come on, Bridget, you know I'm smarter than that."

Her lip curled downward. "I don't know anything, Johnny. Not when you're never here."

"I'm here now."

"Why Birmingham?" She questioned. "We heard you got hurt and were on leave, but you didn't come back home. Captain Price told us you were staying down there till you recovered. We could've been there for you, Johnny."

"John's old enough to make his own decisions, Bridget," their dad chimed in from the doorway. "What matters is that he's home now, and I'm thankful for it."

It was enough to get Bridget off his back for the remainder of his stay, though it didn't ease tension at all between them. There was once a time when things weren't like this. Their mother walked out on them when they were young. Since their dad was busy between three jobs to get by, it fell on John to look after his younger sister. His enlistment was what drove a wedge between them, suddenly he couldn't be around like he always had.

Christmas was pretty quiet. There was some catch up between him and his dad, a game of cards between the three of them. He pointedly avoided Carlie to the best of his abilities. He stayed as long as he could allow himself, till around 15:00, and departed. With an overwhelming sense of relief, he sat back down in his car and drove off.

He returned to Credenhill at around 20:43, exhausted more than anything. He got as far as into the barracks on his way to his quarters when he ran into Price, who quickly took note of his bandaged hand and the gauze taped down to the back of his head. "Trip go well?"

"As well as you can expect," MacTavish shrugged.

"Go down to the infirmary, get yourself checked. Alright?" Price told him. His voice was soft then, laced with guilt.

He gave a curt nod. "Will do."

Turned out he needed about twenty stitches in his hand and he sustained a mild concussion.


	10. Hell can be Home

"So then you got tackled by a dog about as big as you?" Ghost watched MacTavish prod at the numerous stitches in his hand. Doc was flexing some of his authority as a medic for a change and advised no training or work that risked popping the stitches. The decision was clearly driving the Captain up the wall. "I didn't realize dogs could get that big."

"Great Danes are huge monsters," MacTavish grumbled and went to work wrapping his hand in fresh bandages. Sadly, his injured hand was also his dominant, so he clearly struggled a bit.

After a minute, Ghost sat down beside him. "Here, lemme help. You're not doing it right." He took the gauze from him and went over the hand neatly and carefully. "Our Captain, bested by a dog and a bottle of scotch. How awe inspiring."

"Quiet. I'd like to see you deal with that shite." MacTavish curled his fingers a little under the bandages, just to test how tight they were. He definitely couldn't form a proper fist. "Thanks."

"Your welcome," Ghost patted his shoulder and then gave the bandage on the back of his Captain's head a tap. "Need me to change this too?"

The tap made him cringe slightly. He then supplied a small nod in compliance.

Ghost carefully peeled the medical tape up off his scalp, and removed the bloodied pad of gauze. Underneath was a half formed scab over a nasty scrape about 5 cm across. The skin around it was a lovely shade of purple. With a steady hand, he cleaned it up as best he could with the man wincing away under him. "Stay still," he warned, pressing the damp paper towel to the scrape.

"Ow! I'm trying!" MacTavish gripped the knees of his pants.

Shaking his head, Ghost resumed his work and affixed a fresh pad of gauze to the wound with a few strips of medical tape. "Alright. Any other injuries you hiding? Bullet holes, stab wounds?"

The Captain waved him off with a half hearted "No, no." and sunk back in the metal seat. "Any idea when Doc's getting back over here?"

Initially Ghost came in here to deal with a scrape on his back after taking a tumble on the ice outside the barracks. Some ass forgot to salt the step the day before when it was raining, so it froze over. By sheer coincidence, MacTavish was already here getting about seven stitches redone after he tried to open a bag of salt to deal with the ice before anyone could get hurt. Ghost only just got through explaining to Doc that his back was bleeding when Buck arrived, claiming he may have sprained his wrist slipping outside the barracks. That was six minutes ago. "Who knows. I just know that I'm gonna kill whoever forgot to treat the steps."

"You and me both," MacTavish agreed. "And if we don't, Price will have his skin."

At about this time, Buck stepped through, wrist splinted, and left. Doc returned as well and shut the door after Buck was gone, the tension in his brow was enough to make it twitch. "I swear, you lot are a bunch of nutters. I take bullets out of some of you without so much as a peep, but suddenly you can't stop bitching when it hurts to move your hand." He turned to Ghost. "Alright, shirt off. Let's have a look-see."

Ghost tugged his shirt up and over his head, exposing the bloody scrape to the open air. He couldn't see it himself, but if he had to guess, it spanned from his hip all the way to the center of his back.

"Did you leave the rest of your back on the step?" MacTavish commented behind him.

"You're funny." Ghost recoiled slightly as Doc got to work cleaning up the scrape with cool water. "How the hell does a patch of ice take down three of us?"

"You tell me," Doc remarked, covering the wound now. Once the bandage was secure, he gave Ghost's shoulder a tap. "You're all set. And, Captain, I can't stress enough apparently, don't pop the damn stitches."

Ghost couldn't help but smile while his Captain looked more or less disgruntled. He could imagine what would happen if he got seriously hurt. No doubt he'd be a lot to handle with how active he normally was.

This hunch proved to be true, even with something as minor as his injured hand. Almost as soon as they left the infirmary, MacTavish turned in the general direction of the obstacle course. Ghost arched a brow and followed with a quick, "You're not about to go try and work out right after Doc expressly told you not to."

The Captain paused, his cheek giving a slight twitch before he sighed. "I'm not."

"Sure. Where were you headed then?" Ghost questioned.

He grumbled something to himself and started walking again. "Trails. He didn't say anything about walking."

"You really are incapable of taking a break," Ghost noted.

"And you really are the pot calling the kettle black," was MacTavish's response. "If you're so worried that I'll pop the stitches again, you're welcome to join me. But I don't need a babysitter."

Rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses, Ghost followed him out of the building and to the small network of hiking trails that were frequently utilized for training exercises. The cold wasn't so much a concern; this year had to be the most mild winter to date. It kept going between a touch of chill and bouts of wind and rain. Today happened to fall under the latter of the two. At least it was above freezing.

Water dripped off the bare branches, creating a constant pattering ambiance in the otherwise quiet stretch of woodlands. No doubt the calm would be lost after 07:30, when activity really started to kick up around the base. For now, the sun was just coming up, and it was peaceful here.

There was one small thing Ghost took note of though, MacTavish wasn't being nearly as talkative as normal. He stared on ahead of him, not really focused on anything in particular. At first, Ghost figured it was simply him still being cranky about his hand and dismissed it. Eventually the observation became less a side note and more a persistent thought as the silence became deafening. There were some people Ghost had no problem with being silent, but MacTavish wasn't one of them. Taking a chance, he spoke up, "Something on your mind, sir?"

"Hm?" The Captain glanced his way. "Aye, sorry."

"It's alright," he shrugged. This just shifted from one awkward situation to another... "Mind if I ask what?"

"I'm sorry?" The question seemed to take the other off guard, signalling to Ghost that he probably hadn't listened to the initial question.

Ghost frowned, not quite sure if he should give up on his curiosity. He was about to be one dead cat. "What's on your mind?"

"Oh, right," MacTavish tipped his head up towards the canopy, the soft light of the cloudy morning catching in his eyes. Though normally pale blue, they looked almost grey. Ghost had to look away from him entirely just to get his attention off them. "You remember your report after the hostage rescue? You said they were trying to prove themselves as patriots."

"Yeah? What're you getting at?" He definitely remembered his report. A good portion of it focused more on the interactions in the room itself than what his story was.

MacTavish took just a touch longer to answer than Ghost would have liked. "Earlier this month, the Russian Loyalists got pushed out of Moscow and the Ultranationalists took over with some Boris Vorshevsky character leading the party. It just doesn't sit well with me."

"That's nothing new," Ghost responded dismissively.

"You weren't the one fighting when shite hit the fan earlier this year. When we took down Imran Zakhaev, a lot of us hoped we'd cut off the snake's head and the Loyalists would fix things in Russia. That's not the case though and now this new guy pops his bloody head in out of nowhere." He huffed, coming to a stop in the middle of the trail. "Something doesn't add up."

It seemed Ghost would have to talk him through his bit of paranoia. _Joy._ "Okay then, refresh my memory here. The big figures to watch out for were code named 'The Four Horsemen?'"

"Aye." MacTavish then counted each off on his fingers. "There was Zakhaev, Victor, Al-Asad, and..." He paused, a frown working its way to his face.

"And?" Ghost gave him a questioning look.

"... There was some fourth wanker, but we didn't go after him. Some lackey of Zakhaev's like the others. According to intel, he was the one who detonated the nuke, since he was reportedly in the area and Al-Asad was hiding in Azerbaijan."

"Was his death confirmed?"

"As far as I know, no. Troops were pulled and there were roughly 30,000 Americans who couldn't even be collected because of concerns over radiation. It's doubtful they bothered looking for this guy's body."

Ghost nodded slowly. "So it's possible."

"If he was in a lead lined bunker, sure," MacTavish agreed. "Or better yet not in range of the blast."

"News reported rumors of a leadership problem in the Ultranationalist movement shortly after Zakhaev's death. Could be him and whoever else at odds," Ghost said, taking a shot at what the Captain was really thinking here.

MacTavish gave a quiet nod.

"Chances are the bastard's dead." The Lieutenant propped himself against a tree trunk and removed his sunglasses to wipe the lenses with his shirt. "If there's no evidence that anything's about to happen, then we ought to sit tight until there's something solid to go on and not stress otherwise."

With this, MacTavish relaxed his shoulders. "You're probably right."

"Of course I am," Ghost replied, a cocky smile lighting his face. "So, to change the subject, did you have plans for New Years too?"

"Nope," was his simple answer.

Ghost pushed his sunglasses back on. "Neither do I. Bit surprising though, don't Scots take it very seriously?"

MacTavish hummed, looking off through the trees. "I don't feel like visiting strangers. Beside, I never saw the appeal."

"One more reason to get shit faced with your mates," Ghost suggested. "Of course, you can do that any time of the year." Truth be told, Ghost didn't care too much to get drunk these days. He definitely had been an alcoholic for a time, when he hit his depressive episode, but it lasted about as long as his suicidal phase. Short burst; it definitely happened, but he cared too much about what he stood to lose. He stopped drinking alone all together, and he had every intention to keep it that way. Langley, and by extension MacTavish were the only two he felt remotely comfortable enough to drink around at this point.

His mind wandered back to MacTavish's car, with the bag of nip bottles under the seat. He wanted so badly to ask him about it. Why would he keep such a large amount in a place like that? Would it be prying if he mentioned it?

"Something wrong, mate," MacTavish asked, pulling him away from the internal debate.

What were the odds that he could get away with dismissing the matter? "It's nothing."

"Then it should be fine to share."

 _Bloody bastard..._ Ghost felt his frown tighten. He couldn't see this interaction going well, especially not now. "Maybe another time, Captain. Could we head back to base?"

Fortunately, MacTavish didn't pry about it after that. They made their way back with a few attempts at small talk made every now and again. In that moment, on that raw and rainy morning, Ghost felt a semblance of peace for the first time in a long while. As much as he should have found the efforts made to chat annoying, it calmed him instead. It was a sign that all was normal between them, and it was something he could accept.

-()-()-()-

New Years Eve crept up out of nowhere, and before MacTavish could really even pay it any semblance of attention, Price gave him a pat on the shoulder and told him he was in charge for the rest of the day and New Years. Unsurprisingly, Mrs. Price managed to shake her husband down for some semblance of quality time. Something about spending the weekend in London like they did for their tenth anniversary or what have you. That woman was relentless, but if you were married to the man, you kind of had to be. MacTavish wouldn't dare step in the way of their New Years. He preferred living.

Sadly this meant that it fell on him to do any and all paperwork. It managed to pile up too... The younger Captain had to wonder if Price allowed it to on purpose, knowing that the deadlines for these were coming up and it'd give Soap no other choice than to deal with them. All it meant was that HQ would come down on them because he had the absolute worst penmanship they'd ever seen, apparently. It was either write slightly neater or get it done on time though, so if they bitched then he'd blame Price.

For most of the morning, he sat hunched over at that cramped desk going through the proverbial mountain of paperwork all by his lonesome. Somewhere around the four hour mark, it felt more like a standardized test than regular work. His heel drummed against the floor, and it was a struggle not to tap the button at the end of his pen on the desk.

Past noon, a more than welcome distraction finally came in the form of Ghost. In his hand, he held a water bottle and a wrapped up sandwich. "Afternoon, Captain."

Even if MacTavish was genuinely happy that someone came in, he still had to at least feign annoyance at being interrupted. "Did you need something, _Lieutenant_?"

Ghost grinned and slunk into the small office with an almost feline sort of air about him. "Didn't see you down at the mess for lunch."

"You didn't? I could've sworn I was there," the CO replied with a heavy dose of sarcasm. After a small pause he sat back and stretched. "I've been cooped up in here all day trying to get this bloody work done. Someone better shoot me before I ever have to get a full time desk job."

"I think you might be overreacting," Ghost said. "Anyways, you ought to take a break and eat something."

MacTavish smirked at him, and nodded to the sandwich in Ghost's hand. "And let me guess, you brought me lunch because you like me so much."

"Actually, I was going to remind you how hungry you probably are and then eat this in front of you." He sets the very modest lunch on the desk. "'Course I already ate."

"What a gentleman." MacTavish unwrapped the sandwich and his smile immediately vanished. Chicken salad. _So that was why Ghost was being so smug..._ He sighed. They were still better than military rations.

Ghost stepped around beside him and gazed at the large stack of papers. "You really have been busy, haven't you."

MacTavish took a bite of the sandwich and gave a slow nod. "Aye. There's just so much of it."

"How're they expected to read any of this?" Ghost crinkled his nose and pointed to a few very scrawled lines of notes. "What is that supposed to mean?

With a resigned sigh, the Captain gave Ghost a withered stare. "I know my handwriting's absolute garbage, Ghost. I don't have time to make it neat."

"There's garbage and then there's illegible. Lemme see that." Ghost nabbed the pen from his hand and then one of the few blank pieces of paper available to quickly jot down _'Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.'_

MacTavish raised a brow as two observations came to mind. First, Ghost had a very steady hand, which resulted in tidy, angular letters. Second, that was the strangest pangram he'd ever seen. "Where'd you learn that one?"

"It's what my grade school teacher had us write to learn cursive. Nothing special." Ghost clicked the pen and looked to him. "Do you need a hand?"

Propping his elbow on the desk, MacTavish rested his chin in his hand and gave Ghost the most bemused look. "Christ, Ghost, are you actually being nice for a change?"

The Lieutenant didn't quite meet his eyes. "I have my moments. Did you want my help or no? It's no skin off my nose if HQ jumps on your arse for your terrible handwriting."

In terms of professionalism, MacTavish knew that it wouldn't look good if he started dictating to one of his Lieutenants. His cramped hand, however, begged for the sweet kiss of death. Ghost's offer was very tempting...

"I think I'll save myself the reprimand. Thanks though."

For the briefest of moments, there was a very real smile that flashed on Ghost's face. The corners of his eyes crinkled, and just about every little muscle that could possibly go into a smile seemed to easily pull with it. For those few seconds, MacTavish was speechless. He couldn't begin to describe what it was about the expression except that it was _warm_. It was warm and coming from a man who normally presented himself as calloused and jaded. As soon as it came, it was gone, replaced by Ghost's normal Cheshire grin.

"Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess." Ghost set the pen down and stood up straight. "Right then, I think I'll go let the others know you're not dead. Good luck with all the work."

"You do that, Ghost." The Captain picked up his pen went to resume his work. Or at least he pretended to until the other man left. Only once the footsteps faded away did he restlessly run a hand through his hair. In his mind's eye, he could still see that smile, and the thought made his heart give a confused patter. The feeling wasn't new. There had been some girls he'd met in the past who elicited a similar response, but those had been passing interests. Never a man though. Never anyone like Ghost.

As much as he wanted to entertain those thoughts for longer, he resolved to bury them deep down and never touch them again. These feelings weren't okay; not after all the drama they'd just been through. Friendship was fine, it was safe. This wasn't. It could, and would, kill both their careers in an instant if it came out. He'd repress these ultimately useless thoughts, just as he'd done so many times in the past with so many other things.

At least that's what he wished he could do. As the hours dragged on, he found it harder and harder to ignore that persistent image of Ghost smiling. Resolve to ignore it turned to the hesitant wonder of whether he could actually get away with acting on it. It'd take time, and he'd need to know if Ghost reciprocated his feelings, but if they kept things very closed off and private, they just may be able to pull it off. After all, they were members of an elite task force, surely they could exercise some level of discretion.


	11. Survivors

It was rare when something was so serious that someone came knocking on MacTavish's door at one in the bloody morning, but it definitely grabbed his attention when it happened. Being the light sleeper he was, it took six or so solid knocks before the groggy Captain came to the door and answered in just his pants. At the door was Marlin, who definitely wasn't at his post. "Aye? Did someone celebrate the new year too hard?"

Marlin glanced back down the hall, his hands fretted with his hat. "Sir, a shooting happened at Piccadilly station after the fire works show. Captain Price's wife called. Apparently the Captain was caught up in the crossfire."

His blood ran cold as thoughts of the exploding oil tanker flashed in his mind, and then one of Kamarov's men pounding on Price's chest performing CPR. "No..." MacTavish went and yanked a shirt on, then a jacket over that. "Did she say if he was alright?"

"He's probably in the ER, I'd think. I wasn't told much details, just to go tell you," Marlin admitted while he watched his superior tug on his boots. "What do we do, sir?"

"We don't do anything unless we get orders to," the young Captain told him, shutting the door on his way out. " _I'm_ going to go call Mrs. Price and figure out what bloody hospital they're at. If anything comes up, find Ghost."

"Of course, sir."

MacTavish quickly rounded the corner and headed towards the communications desk where the call would've been received. He had no way of knowing what number Price's wife called from and this was the fastest way to find out. The Corporal stationed there sat up straight and greeted him, and was more than willing to get the number and call the woman back for him. The Captain took the phone from there and impatiently waited for anyone to pick up.

" _H-hello?_ " She sounded like she was in shock, definitely had been crying.

Not wanting to upset her even more, he forced his tone to calm as he asked, "Mrs. Price, this is Captain MacTavish, I'm calling to ask what your husband's condition is."

" _Oh. John's going to be alright... At least he will be if he lets the doctors treat him,_ " Mrs. Price seemed to say this to someone on her end. It was followed by some muffled but very much heated conversation that led to the distinct clatter of the phone being dropped.

"Mrs. Price? Are you still there?" MacTavish repeatedly drummed his fingertips against the counter as he waited for someone to answer.

" _Who is this?_ " This time it was Price who answered.

Dizzy with relief, the young Captain sighed. "Sir, it's MacTavish. What's your condition?"

" _I'll live. A graze, dislocated shoulder, probably a mild concussion - but that's the worst of it._ "

"Alright... What hospital are you at?"

" _St. Bartholomew's, I think? Soap, it's over a three hour drive to get here, you stay on base,_ " Price insisted. " _We're both fine, so don't worry about it._ "

Reluctantly, MacTavish conceded with a low, "Fine. See you when you get back to base."

" _See you then,_ " Price replied.

MacTavish hung up the phone and shook his head. Sometimes he really wished Price wasn't such a stubborn bastard when things like this came up. He had to remind himself that the man lived through worse than this, that he now had a good confirmation that his superior would be fine. For now, he'd just have to hold down the fort until Price was back in play. Of course, if he really did have a dislocated shoulder, he doubted that the old man would be back on the field for a while.

-()-()-()-

 _"... a shooting in Piccadilly station which has claimed the lives of eleven people and injured thirteen others, ended in the shooter ending his own life before he could be detained by authorities. Officials have yet to comment on the cause or motive behind this act of violence at the heart of Britain last night. Back to you, Greg."_

"Turn the damn telly off."

Ghost glanced over the back of the dusty, old lounge chair in the rec room towards the card table where MacTavish glowered at the TV. "Not in the mood for Denise Mayweather and her stellar reporting skills?"

"You might as well have a computer read the teleprompter," the Captain grumbled, then picked up his stack of paperwork and tapped the edge against the tabletop to straighten them out for the _twelfth_ time. At this point, it almost seemed like a nervous habit for him to mess around with every single thing he could get his hands on.

The light sound alone made Ghost regret suggesting MacTavish do work somewhere other than his office for a bit. "If I turn this off, you have to stop tapping your bloody papers."

With an indignant grunt, his CO set down the papers. Ghost shut off the TV afterwards. MacTavish rubbed at his face. "Can't believe Price won't be back on duty till the 10th..."

"Yeah, that's what happens when you get caught up in a shooting," Ghost remarked. "He's lucky he's not gone for longer."

"Or dead..."

The two of them fell silent after that. Ghost didn't exactly know how to cheer up the normally optimistic Captain.

Why did he care about how his CO was feeling enough to wonder about cheering him up anyways? Riley needed to worry about himself. As much as he hated it, he knew the answer. Their near month long dispute made him appreciate their 'friendship', as confusing as it was. He even put in that extra effort to be more sociable around MacTavish just to help settle the turbulence. It was such a dizzying change from actively avoiding all unnecessary contact with him, but it was a strangely welcome one.

"Ghost? You're staring."

Ghost blinked and turned back around in his chair. "Just spacing out, mate."

The plastic chair scraped on the floor, indicating MacTavish stood up. A moment later, the broad man's shadow fell over Ghost as he leaned over the back of his seat.

Uncertain what to make of this, Ghost sunk a little into the cushion. "Did you need something?"

"You're actually wearing it," MacTavish noted, pointing at the balaclava bunched up around Ghost's neck. A little bit of the skull print was visible at his throat.

Ghost tugged at the material. After the hostage rescue in Ukraine, he found himself holding onto it a lot more than he wanted to admit. Daresay, he started to cherish the silly thing. "Yeah? And your point?"

"Nothing, I just noticed was all," his CO said, though it was clear he meant to say something different. In one easy motion, he pushed off and away from the seat. "I'm tired..."

"You're off duty, mate. Take a break from the papers if you're tired." Ghost sat up straight again and craned his head to look at him as he paced close to the card table.

MacTavish gave him a blank stare. "Then they pile up again..."

Now Ghost got to his feet. "You've been at these all day. Taking some time away from them isn't gonna hurt." He approached and picked up the papers, then pressed them to MacTavish's chest. "Come on, put 'em back in your office, let's go for a walk or something."

The Captain seemed perturbed, and for a moment Ghost worried that he overstepped some unspoken boundary. Fortunately though, this didn't seem to be the case, since MacTavish ultimately agreed to the idea and they set out to go walk around the base. Walking turned to having a smoke, which progressed into getting drinks. The jump to this happened so quickly that Ghost almost didn't think about the fact that they walked back to the Captain's office, where MacTavish produced a few nip bottles of whiskey from underneath the desk.

Almost. Ghost regarded the bottles with a raised brow and then looked over to where the security camera was in the corner. For one reason or another, there was a piece of duct tape stuck over the lens. They had privacy. "Does, uh... Does Price know you keep a full stock of liquor under the desk?"

"Oh he knows. I don't go through all the trouble to hide these from him." He cracked open one of the nips and passed it to Ghost.

With one last weary glance back towards the door, Ghost confirmed that it was indeed locked. Nobody could walk in on them either. He knocked back the tiny bottle and set it down on the desk. "So let me get this straight. You've got bottles stashed in here, you've got bottles stashed in your car... I think you're a bloody alcoholic, sir."

MacTavish was about to drink his when Ghost said this, instead he paused and lowered it from his lips. "You saw those too?"

"They rolled out from under the seat when I drove your car back to base," Ghost stated. "I meant to bring it up with you."

"That right?" He drank his nip and set it down beside the other empty bottle. "I guess alcoholic isn't totally inaccurate. I won't try and defend a bad habit."

Ghost went ahead and grabbed one of the chairs left pushed against the wall. Seemed like they'd be here a while. "So why?"

Following Ghost's cue, MacTavish sat himself down as well. "Planning on being a therapist today?"

The Lieutenant gave a wiry smirk and picked up the next nip bottle, letting it hang between his fingers. "No, but this has been eating at me for weeks. So be a dear and just explain it."

MacTavish snorted as he laughed and shook his head. "Alright, _love_ , you wanna know? It's pretty much the same reason any other soldier's turned to it. I know there are better ways to deal with trauma, and I do try, it's just that drinking shuts up the survivors guilt quicker."

"And you've seen someone about it?" Ghost asked, opening the bottle in his hand and having his next drink.

"We're more or less required to nowadays. Therapist said I have PTSD." He sighed heavily and ran a hand through his mohawk. "There's no fixing shite like that. Once you're broken, that's it."

Even if you glued the pieces back together, the cracks would still be there. Ghost knew it all too well. "I've been there, but you probably read that from my files."

"Aye..."

"So is drinking the worst you've done?" Ghost asked cautiously. The moment he asked it, he wished he could take it back. This had to be treading into some deeply personal shit.

MacTavish shook his head. "No, it's not. Nearly shot myself once. Couldn't pull the trigger." This statement was met with a heavy silence as they both stared at each other with grim understanding. Ghost knew his Captain could probably guess that he sank that low too, that he had an unvoiced question that hung in the air: why didn't he? MacTavish got out the next bottle and downed it. "... I don't know what I was thinking, but I must've sat there with the muzzle pressed against my head for ten minutes before my mate came in and pried it out of my hand."

"Bloody hell..." Ghost mumbled. This subject was way too sensitive, too intimate, he had no right to know. Why open up this much to him? One look at MacTavish told him all he needed. "You must really trust me if you're telling me all this."

"Pretty sure I made it clear that I trusted you a while ago," his CO replied. He gave a low chuckle. "Maybe the whiskey's kicking in and I'm just not thinking straight."

Ghost couldn't help but laugh at this. "Like hell you're drunk already. Your tolerance has to be twice mine."

"So you _are_ a cheap date then," he mused, pulling another out. It was left to sit on the desk. "Seeing as this is no drinking contest, no need to rush and get you hammered again."

Ghost's face burned as he crossed his arms and gave the man a cross look. "Everyone's a cheap date compared to you."

MacTavish smirked. "True. It's a curse really."

"Keep talking like that and I'll find a way to get you drunk just for the hell of it."

"You already did."

The conversation carried on like this for the next hour and a half, some more bottles were emptied and left abandoned on the desk. Progressively the distance between them seemed to vanish, both metaphorically and physically, until the two of them ended up sitting on the floor side by side at the foot of the desk, propped against each other's shoulders. Although Ghost was aware of his own level of intoxication, conversation seemed to come so easily now that he could care less. Rank, past, future... none of that seemed relevant now.

It felt comfortable. The company, the feeling of the small, innocent contact between them. Ghost's head lulled onto the other's shoulder. "Ya know, i's weird no one's wonderin' where we are."

The statement seemed to snap a semblance of sense into MacTavish. "Shite... what time is it?" His hand patted the ground several times before he broke into a laugh. "Oh. Right. Watch didn't come off..." He lifted his arm to check. "It's... twen..." He squinted at the analog time piece. "Fuck it. 8 P.M. Curfew."

"Bloody hell, Langley'll smell the booze on me a kilo away," Ghost fretted. It'd be difficult explaining this to his dorm mate. If he tried, it'd also possibly get them in trouble. This was a clear deviation from the rules. They could fib that they left the base, drank, and came back, but saying that they were drunk driving was potentially worse. "What should we do?"

"Uhh..." MacTavish turned his attention up towards the ceiling. "... We can wait in here till you're sober enough to get to your room. Besides that, my quarters are down the hall."

"So either stay here or shack with you." Ghost pressed his finger against his CO's stubbly cheek. "Sounds gay."

"You're gay," was the Captain's immediate response, turning his head to snap his teeth at Ghost's finger. The action was so sudden that Ghost didn't have a chance to stop pressing and so the digit sunk straight past MacTavish's lips. They exchanged confused looks before Ghost playfully tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Augh! Would you stop it?!"

Ghost cackled and he withdrew his finger. It didn't so much matter to him that it was coated in spit now. "You had it coming! 'sides, you kissed me, remember?"

Where Ghost anticipated MacTavish would fervently deny the implications, he was instead met with the man turning beet red and smacking his head against the back of the desk. "It's not my fault you look so bloody kissable..."

The response left the Lieutenant stunned. How does someone brush that off? Heck, it made him recount how many drinks they both had for something like that to come out. It only now seemed to settle in with Ghost that where he stopped drinking for forty minutes at this point, MacTavish had continued to steadily drink up until twenty minutes ago. "What happened to being straight?"

"Fuck being straight. Just fuck that." MacTavish's hand fell heavily on Ghost's knee. His normally focused stare was glossy as he looked to Ghost. "What am I proving pretending I don't feel anything? I like you... way, waaaay more than I should. I'm a numpty..."

"Hey, mate, it's fine. We both are." Ghost rested his hand on top of the other's. "I tried really hard to hate you. I can't do it. You're a fucking puppy or somethin'."

MacTavish crinkled his nose. "Can I not be a puppy?"

"You're something then," Ghost replied. "It's stupid... I wanna do shit with you, but I don't want you going and blocking yourself off in the morning like last time."

"We could-"

"Oh fuck off with that," the Lieutenant interrupted. "We're not doing shit right now. If you really want a kiss, hit me up when we're both sober."

With puffed cheeks, MacTavish pouted. "Alright..."

Ghost couldn't help but smile at the childish response from him. He tugged his balaclava up just enough to cover the lower half of his face, masking his expression with a skeleton grin. He then leaned in and pressed his lips against the Captain's cheek through the warm material. His smile grew only wider as the other man's face turned even redder. "Consider that a preview though."

"Feels more like a teaser," MacTavish quipped. Although Ghost would never say it aloud, he wholeheartedly agreed with him.

It took a long time after that before either of them mustered the willpower to get up and dispose of the nip bottles (cleverly tucked underneath a lot of trash in the waste bin) and leave the office. Tired and still pretty drunk, there was no way Ghost could hope to sneak past the night patrol back to the barracks, much less explain why he couldn't walk in a straight line. Ultimately, he took up MacTavish's offer to let him crash in his quarters for the night. Nothing about the room registered with him as they both fumbled to the bed. The mattress springs gave a loud squeal when the two men rolled out on the single. Backs pressed against each other, Ghost ignored the covers and let the warmth of his clothes and the other body lull him to a dreamless sleep.


	12. Human

The room that Ghost woke up in definitely wasn't his own. From the odd placing of the bed - pushed to the corner by the door so that no one could see it until they were fully in the room - to the very busy work space in the opposite corner with its supplies cluttering the desktop, it was dramatically different from his and Langley's bare-bones dorm. Perhaps the most distinct feature of the living space was a bookshelf with a mix of actual literature, more than enough folders and files to fill a small cabinet, and a short stack of art pens in their packaging on top of a couple sketch books. It was different, but it felt very lived in and comfortable. Blue, early morning light filtered in through the slats of the blinds, casting striped shadows across the floor, further adding to the calm atmosphere.

The very next thing Ghost noticed was just how warm he actually felt, enough where he considered drifting back to sleep. For one reason or another, he slept fully clothed, was huddled under a blanket, and the body heat of another person radiated behind him. Ghost turned a little and peered over his shoulder, only to find himself staring at the back of MacTavish's head. He still seemed to be fast asleep.

He turned his attention back to the rest of the room in search of any indication of the time. On one of the shelves was a small digital clock, the little white numbers reading out 06:21; much later than he would've liked. Several options floated through his head as he lay still on the edge of the bed. Part of him wanted to just go back to sleep, but that could be a death sentence. The longer he stayed here, the more likely someone would spot them leaving together and the hyperactive rumor mill would be whispering about fraternization again. Leaving was a must, but it felt rude to without a word, even if nothing happened. Some fretting later, Riley decided he had little other choice than to hurry back to his dorm - hopefully before Langley woke up.

Ghost tried to be stealthy as he sat up, but the slightest of movements caused the springs in the mattress to shriek. The sound was deafening in the otherwise silent room. Half propped on his elbow, legs hanging off the bed, he waited several seconds for any sign that the creaky bed gave him away. Deciding he must be in the clear, Ghost sat up fully.

It should have been quiet again, but the mattress gave another creak which was followed by a deeply accented mumble, "Wha's happen...?" Something grabbed the back of his shirt. "...Ghost?"

 _Fuck_. With no good way to explain himself, Ghost swallowed his panicking nerves. "Yeah?"

A faint chuckle bubbled behind him. "I think I had too much..."

"You had a lot," Ghost confirmed, finally turning his head to look at the other. "Why? You hungover?"

MacTavish had rolled onto his back, and he stared at him with tired eyes. "Jus'a headache. I'll live." He rubbed at his face, a low groan hitched in his throat followed by a yawn. "Were you leaving?"

Ghost gave a curt nod. "Yeah. Figured I'd shower." It was a lie, but he didn't feel the need to bring up the awkward topic of hiding their late night together like this. Not when they were both still half awake and the full gravity of the situation had yet to sink in. "Thanks for letting me stay the night."

"It's no problem," MacTavish murmured, dropping his head back down on the pillow. "I like the company."

The statement made the Lieutenant pause. It likely had something to do with the problems he'd mentioned last night, but it could have meant anything. Slowly, Ghost got to his feet and stretched his arms over his head. "See you later, mate," he said, hoping to play this whole thing off as if nothing happened. As if they didn't have such a personal, vulnerable moment...  
...As if he didn't sincerely wish that his Captain of all people would turn him around and kiss him right here, convince him to stay a little while longer.

There was a faint mumble that Ghost assumed was a "See you" and, like a light, MacTavish was out again. Ghost bit at his lip as he gave the door a wayward glance, then sighed and draped the blanket over the man. Without another word, he left, making sure to lock the door on his way out. Once he heard the click, he knew there was no returning. It forced him to carry on with his plan. Ghost slipped into the shower before he returned to his dorm to wash off the smell of alcohol, which, fortunately made for a decent excuse when he came back to find Langley awake. A claim that he had a hard time sleeping and woke up far too early was enough to silence his roommate.

-()-()-()-

Of all the things MacTavish figured he'd be doing the day after an eventful night like he had, dealing with Gridlock and Buck's antics wasn't high on his list. Alone, they would have just been annoying, but together they were dangerous. It seemed they believed it'd be hilarious to break into Crane and Gryphon's dorm and make a web of strapping tape throughout the room at ankle level. No serious injuries, though Gryphon did trip over the tape and bruise his knees. Worse could have happened.

MacTavish sighed as he looked at the four men standing in the office. This was like Northern Ireland all over again... "Sgt. Howard, Sgt. Bentley, does that sound about right?"

Both Buck and Gridlock snapped to attention as they were called out. Gridlock spoke up, "Sir, this was my idea. I take responsibility for it."

"Responsible or not, Buck's able to make his own decisions," the Captain returned, crossing his arms. "I get Credenhill's boring, but this isn't how you're to conduct yourselves. Seeing as you got too much time and energy on your hands, the two of you can go do inventory. I expect it done by 12:00."

Gridlock cringed a bit at this, though Buck looked absolutely disinterested. Both Crane and Gryphon maintained poker faces, fairly common place among the Lieutenants of the 141.

Not that he could exactly justify a worse punishment for something as harmless as that silly little prank. "Pull this shite again and it's laps and cleaning duties. Do I make myself clear?"

"Sir, yes, sir." Both men replied. With it, they were dismissed. Gryphon left along with them. Crane, however, stayed behind.

"Did you need something, Lt. Shin?" MacTavish asked, thumbing through a few files. He'd need to add an additional NJP to both their records.

Crane nodded. "Sir, permission to speak freely?"

The request brought a bead of weariness in his gut. What could possibly be going through the otherwise quiet sniper's mind? "Go ahead."

"I think they're testing limits," Crane asserted. When he was met with a questioning stare, he frowned. "Most of the men have a hard time taking your authority seriously on account of your age."

MacTavish tapped his fingers against his bicep and took a moment to consider this. True, he didn't have nearly the same years of experience as Price. Beyond some vague talk that he showed promise, there was very little that marked him as a reasonable authority figure. "I understand my position. Thank you for the concern."

Crane offered him no word of advice on the matter, simply excused himself. Alone, MacTavish shut the door and stared down at the floor in front of his desk. His position was a delicate one, yet here he was drinking on base and flirting with one of his officers. If Price found out, he'd probably give him an ear full on responsibility and compromising his judgement. The young Captain didn't need to hear what he was already on himself about.

Propped against the door, he rested the back of his head against the wood. "Captain... What am I getting myself into?"

-()-()-()-

When Price returned to duty, he had no idea what he was expecting. The base didn't catch fire, which was good. However, orders came down that they were moving out of Credenhill. Apparently the Director of British Special Forces wanted the base back to being exclusively for the S.A.S. It was only a matter of time, though Price wondered why this didn't come up much sooner; the 141 had been squeezed in there for a solid three months now.

Now where would General Shepherd possibly station an international task force? As it turned out, there was a vacant base on the border between this county and Wales. It offered space and was fairly quiet. There was the added benefit of it being about a half hour away, so moving all of them there wouldn't be a major production. The location was a touch surprising to Price, who expected him to move the entire force all the way into the States to have them closer at hand. This was blissfully close to home.

It fell on Price to make sure that the relocation went as smoothly as possible. Over the next week, he and Soap needed to handle a mountain of forms and the agonizing process of portioning out housing between the 80+ operatives (some of whom had families with them who had to move too). There was also informing their men as soon as possible that they were changing bases so they could pack up their belongings and be ready. It had to be done on time.

There had been many times Price was asked to stay up one, sometimes two, whole days. All those times though, the circumstances were tense and sleeping was a deadly risk. A functioning human brain could only handle consciousness so long before one's grasp of reality and judgement broke down, and without proper motivation it had ways of forcing itself to sleep. For this reason, Price didn't bother to push himself or find issue when his bed called for him like a siren to a weary sailor.

Soap on the other hand didn't have nearly as firm a grasp of what over extending himself was. The first couple of days, it was late nights, two hours extra spent working. Price didn't think too hard on it. Saturday night came and went, then, Sunday morning, MacTavish was still there. A paper coffee cup sat on the desk beside him as he continued flipping through files. Since he seemed no worse for wear, Price let it slide and proceeded as usual.

Sunday night, it was the same exchange. "You should get some sleep tonight, Soap."

"Just a couple more hours. I want to double check some things first."

A couple more hours. That was fine. Price went to his quarters and dismissed it for the night. Monday morning came and there he was again. This time he was shocked to see Price and struggled to grasp that he yet again spent a whole night working. Price was ready to send him to his quarters to sleep, but MacTavish insisted he'd be fine and would get some sleep that night. Price resolved to drag him out of the office on his way out later.

Once again though, 20:00 rolled around and the same conversation played out. This time, Price drummed his fingers on the door frame. "I'm serious, Soap. You've been up for over two days. Get some bloody sleep, son."

"I'm fine, Captain. Besides, we have a deadline to meet and at the rate we're going we won't make it unless we pull extra hours to finish." The younger man gave him a hard, dark ringed stare, challenging him to refute his point.

Price took a deep breath. "We're going to be even more behind if none of it's done right."

"It will be. Have some bloody faith in me."

There was little Price could think of to counter that. Not when the younger was so damn hostile. Last thing he needed was a hole punched through the wall. "Two more hours. If I find you here tomorrow, I'm dragging your arse down to the infirmary."

Soap grumbled something under his breath, but it went unacknowledged. Once more, Price went to bed. The following morning, MacTavish was still there, his eyes glued to whatever paper was in his hand.

Fed up, Price walked straight over and grabbed his shoulder. "Come on."

The younger man jumped with alarm, the paper fluttering from his hand. "Ah, shite, what?"

"I warned you. Now come on, you're going to rest whether you like it or not." Price hauled him up out of the chair and pulled him along to the door. All the while, MacTavish stumbled to keep up.

"I can walk fine, would you let go?"

"You can hardly _stand_ , Soap," Price shot back. "No, I won't let go."

On the way there, they ended up passing by Ghost, who stopped mid-task (moving supplies by the looks of it) to gawk at the two Captains. "Something happen, sirs?"

Before MacTavish could open his mouth, Price answered. "He's sleep deprived and being a general muppet, Ghost. I wouldn't worry too much about him."

"I could walk him to the infirmary. I'm headed that way anyways and you probably have a lot to do." Ghost offered.

Price considered this with a low hum. "Alright. Thank you."

"I'm fine, really..." MacTavish insisted, tugging his arm back. "It's no big deal."

Ghost flipped the box under one arm and tapped him on the back. "No, it isn't, mate. Let's go."

After a couple drawn out blinks, MacTavish rubbed at the back of his head and followed Ghost. Relieved that he'd gone willingly, Price turned and headed back to the office to pick back up where Soap left off. Much to his surprise, there weren't all that many mistakes to correct and the majority of it was done. He'd have to thank him when his charge was better rested.

-()-()-()-

It was pretty easy for Ghost to lead MacTavish towards the infirmary; he just needed to distract him with small talk and the Captain seemed to forget where they were headed. A couple of times though, he wobbled and Ghost had to stop and steady him. He had no idea how long MacTavish had been awake by then, but if the bloodshot eyes underlined with dark bags were any indication, then too long. Before they could reach the tiny medical office, some glimmer of recognition lit on the exhausted Captain's face and he stopped dead in his tracks.

Ghost stopped as well, a touch annoyed, if only because they weren't far from their destination. "What is it?"

"Can we not go to Doc for this," MacTavish requested. "It's not worth his time."

An exasperated sigh escaped him. "If we don't go there, then it's to your quarters. Either way, you're getting some sleep."

"I'm not tired..."

"A nap's not gonna kill you, mate. 'Sides, you look like you could use one." As Ghost said this, he turned them both around and headed towards the man's room instead. Hopefully the familiar surroundings would help him nod off quicker. The only bit of trouble that came up was unlocking the door, since MacTavish couldn't seem to remember where he left his keys. He must've patted himself down six or seven times, during which he went back and forth on whether he took them out of his pocket and then jumping to the conclusion that someone had to have stolen them.  
They were in one of the sleeve pockets of his jacket...

"Thanks. I guess I should lie down now." MacTavish said stiffly, dragging the key from the lock.

Ghost frowned. "Yes. You should."

"I will go do that..." He slipped past the Lieutenant and went to close the door. Before he could, a boot blocked it. MacTavish stared at the foot far longer than he normally would have. "Uh... What...?"

"You're a terrible liar, Captain," Ghost noted.

Caught in his fib, his CO seemed absolutely at a loss now. "Why do you think I'm lying?"

"Call it a hunch." With this, Ghost slipped into the room, shut the door behind him, and guided him to bed. "Besides, I want to make sure you actually sleep."

It was too easy to push him down on the creaky mattress. The moment that MacTavish's head hit his pillow, he struggled to keep his eyes open or so much as move. "... you're just gonna walk right out once I do, eh, Riley...?"

The sound of his last name from him was almost foreign. It didn't carry the same friendliness that his callsign or even the normally dryly stated 'Lieutenant' did. In fact, it felt serious, heavy. Ghost turned his head. "I've still got work to do, sir."

"Right..." The fight against his eyelids sapped away as he gave a weak chuckle. "Sorry for the trouble. You don't need t'stay..."

"Like I said, I'm staying until you're asleep." Ghost patted the other man's arm, his expression soft as he waited for him to expend the rest of his nervous energy. "What's been keeping you up anyways?"

MacTavish stared at him behind his lashes. "I'm tryin' t'pull my weight around here. Have to. Too much to do."

 _Work. Figures._ "You're gonna work yourself to an early grave at this rate."

"So?"

It had to be the sheer exhaustion talking. Ghost refused to believe that it was anything else. "Don't 'so' me. I'm serious. What the hell would we do without you?"

"Still got Price... He can always teach someone else..." MacTavish turned over onto his side, back to the Lieutenant. "People expect perfection, Ghost, but I got so many problems. I'm one fucking man. One. Man. They're asking me to go from a Sergeant to Captain over night and do well. Surprise, surprise, people barely respect me because I'm way too fucking young to be in charge."

Ghost listened quietly as MacTavish carried on with his mini tirade. At the earliest pause, he asked, "How old are you?"

"Twenty-six..." he grumbled. "Twenty-seven in a couple months."

Young was a fair complaint. Ghost was a year older than him, and had been his rank for a couple of years now. Still, the idea that anyone would give their Captain trouble when he made an obvious effort to do a decent job left a bitter taste in his mouth. "Yeah, well, as far as I'm concerned you earned my respect."

It was silent for several seconds, and Ghost figured that MacTavish passed out. He headed for the door, and, just as he touched the handle, he heard a him utter, "Thanks, Ghost..." After that, it seemed he finally expelled the last of his energy. With the faintest of smiles, the Lieutenant returned it with a curt goodbye and headed off to go drop off the package he had neglected up till now.

MacTavish wouldn't be seen leaving his quarters until a full day later. Although groggy and tired, he looked nowhere near as bad.


	13. To Seek Approval

January 19th couldn't seem to come up faster. The base was bustling far earlier than normal; soldiers darted up and down the halls of the barracks like ornery wasps. Chatter filled the air, boots clapped against the tile floors, duffel bags rustled with their contents. The sun wouldn't rise for another three hours. Buses waited outside, their exteriors faded white. Some men got into their own cars, a few had children who couldn't stop trying to rub the sleep from their eyes or spouses trailing close behind them. As Captain Price tossed his bag into the passenger seat, he turned back to see the Director and a few SAS operatives standing out and watching them leave. The Major General looked his way, calm and professionally silent as he gave him a salute. Price quickly returned it, a smile fighting its way to his face.

The drive to the new location felt like it took ages, but maybe that was because it was still dark when they arrived. Price almost missed the main gate and its sign entirely, being as exhausted as he was, but in the brief moment when their convoy slowed down and he had to hit the breaks, he caught a glimpse of it. R.A.F. Brook Line.

They all parked near the barracks and then began the long, tedious task of counting heads and making sure everyone was accounted for. Price stood in front of his men, Soap by his side, as he addressed the company:  
"Even though we don't have Director Wilkens breathing down our necks here, I expect everyone here to maintain the same level of professionalism as you've shown since day one. Now, over the course of the next five days, we'll be getting this base back into working order. If you see anything in disrepair, you're to report it to any officer and we'll deal with it accordingly. Dismissed."

In the time between then and sunrise, Price brought his bag to his new quarters and set to unpacking. The room held the oh so charming atmosphere that only peeling paint, squealing door hinges, and the damp scent of mildew could bring. There were also the suspect dark stains on the bed sheets that he couldn't even hope to identify. The room desperately needed some attention before it could ever hope to meet his standard of habitable. Fortunately, he had all day to do that.

For now, Price dealt with the squeaky hinges, which really only demanded a bit of oiling, and gathered up the sheets to be washed (probably bleached too, burned maybe if nothing washed out). Over the course of the day, he came and left his quarters in his quest to tidy it up. He wasn't the only one either. The barracks were bustling as everyone found their quarters and set to cleaning them up after a couple of years of disuse. There was a stack of about a dozen mattresses outside the building, springs jutting out of some while others bore large rips in them. They'd need to be trashed and replaced. Hopefully there were enough cots in storage for them to make use of until everyone had a proper bed.

Price had to wonder why they couldn't have gotten a base that wasn't in such a sorry state. The Director and Shepherd seemed to be constantly locked in a pissing contest, and this time Wilkens really stomped on the Lieutenant General's ego. Must've been a good show. Even still, he hadn't even heard of this base before last week. It was _that_ unremarkable and trashed. While another pair of men came out with a destroyed mattress and left it by the pile, Price couldn't help but smile. Underwhelming and crumby made for a good place to avoid attention.

That night, he decided to walk around the base before he turned in. It helped him familiarize himself with the area, if nothing else. At least that was his excuse for it; a small part of it was wanting to make absolutely sure his men were settling in well to the new space. If the base was mildly unwelcoming during the day, it was something out of a Steven King novel at night. Halls were lit with off white lights, a few bulbs flickered like strobes, and the howling wind outside cemented the creepy ambiance. It was nothing like Credenhill.

Rounding the corner, he approached the door to leave the office building and return to the barracks. Outside, he caught the familiar smell of cigarette smoke, and spied a pair of glowing red cherries from a couple men smoking. In the low light, Price had to squint before he could make out the tall forms of Soap and Ghost. Too enthralled in their conversation, they didn't take note of him watching. Although Price couldn't make out what they were saying, he heard the warm laughter between them. Ghost practically threw his head back at whatever joke was told, the faintest gleam of his teeth hinting at a wide smile.

Price scratched at his chin. Seemed Ghost managed to patch things up rather nicely after whatever drunken incident they had a month ago; not that Price didn't have a solid hunch as to what that was. The idea of Ghost being attracted to men didn't seem all that far fetched to him. Soap however... Well, the lad's sexuality had largely been an enigma to him after Nikolai regaled him with the story about five hot nurses all fawning over the young Sergeant in Birmingham only to have their advances rebuffed. Nikolai was pretty much convinced that he was gay by then, Price put his money on asexual.  
Seemed he owed Nikolai fifteen pounds.

-()-()-()-

In the week following their arrival, R.A.F. Brook Line underwent extensive repair work and clean up. Broken furniture and equipment was either repaired or replaced, grime was cleaned off every surface, a few spots were repainted, the obstacle course was fixed up... Price was admittedly proud of the job his men did. For that reason, he didn't feel particularly bothered by the last minute notice that General Shepherd would be coming to visit and inspect the base. The commander was probably expecting a mess and ready to harp at them about what needed to be done. That wouldn't be necessary.

Price had met the General a hand full of times, and not once did he ever particularly like him. It was hard to place where his sense of distrust came from, but he got the feeling that Shepherd carried a hunger in him. Bitterness and resentment gnawed like a feral animal under a well tempered masked. It wasn't any mystery that he lost tens of thousands of men in the nuclear blast last year. It was a fault line that could trigger disaster at a moment's notice. Soap, on the other hand, didn't seem to have any issues with him. If anything, he immediately trusted the General. Price ultimately dismissed his feelings as unwarranted paranoia, favoring the younger man's judgement of character more than his own.

That didn't mean he had to like him though. As he followed alongside the General, he watched every minute change in expression on his face from the corner of his eye. The littlest flaws brought a crease to his forehead, soon Price associated the expression with him about to point out some obvious problem that they were already in the process of addressing. Shepherd's brow crinkled yet again as they reached the Captains' office (just as before, he and his XO decided to share it and make it easier on themselves). "How's MacTavish been settling into his new position?"

"He's fine," Price answered, masking his surprise that for once it wasn't a complaint. The curtness of his response prompted a sideways glance from his CO, so he backpedaled to elaborate on it. "He's a fast learner and devoted to doing the job well. If there's any problem, then it'd be his lack of experience."

"That changes over time," Shepherd drawled.

Price crossed his arms. "Right." It was easy to leave it at that.

"Not very talkative today?" Stopping at the door, he opened it and led the way into the small office. Inside, the desk was pushed up against a wall, leaving a lot of space open for a spare card table in the center of the room to provide an extra spot for the two Captains to do their paperwork. A shot glass sat innocently on the desk, filled with an assortment of pens and mechanical pencils. The General grabbed a chair and merely leaned against the back of it. In the process, Price saw the bulging paper bag taped under the seat, likely filled with nip bottles, and tried not to panic. Luckily, Shepherd didn't seem to notice as he next inquired, "And how about Lt. Riley?"

Price forced any emotions from his face at the mention of Ghost; too much sensitive material above his clearance despite the fact that he was supposed to be the one in charge of him. Had Soap not done all the digging he did when he saw the redacted files, Price wouldn't have even considered him a viable member in the first place. They knew more than they were supposed to. "He's getting along just fine, not very social though."

Shepherd didn't seem to think much on his simple answer. At least, Price hoped he didn't. It would be difficult to explain how they knew the Lieutenant's convoluted history. "So he hasn't caused any trouble. That's good."

"You make it sound like you expected him to," Price remarked.

"He knows his place. That's what matters."

Did this man threaten Ghost prior to him joining? Why say anything so ominous? The fact that he and Soap were the only two Shepherd bothered to inquire about was unsettling. The Captain frowned, and attempted to play this off with an absent drag of his hand along his mustache. "So you've seen the place. Was there anything else that needed addressing?"

Too informal. Although Shepherd didn't comment on it, he definitely noticed it. _Good._ It would keep his mind off Ghost for a while. "Your men did a pretty good job getting this place back in order, not that I expected less from a man with your sort of reputation. I do have one last thing I'd like to bring up." Shepherd produced a short stack of papers: forms, from the look of them, and already filled. It took Price a moment to realize that the penmanship didn't match either his or MacTavish's. "Have you two been getting someone else to help you with the work load?"

Price bit the inside of his cheek. The only other person he could think of who would was Ghost. He'd been spending a fair amount of time around the younger Captain when he was busy. "I think MacTavish is trying to fix that handwriting problem that Command's been on him for." It was a lie. A straight up lie.

At that moment, perhaps the worst time imaginable, Soap showed up. Two steps in and he stopped. "Sir. Sorry, I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

Shepherd cast Price a sideways glance before giving the younger an even smile. If only Price could warn his charge what was coming. "Not at all. Actually, I'm glad you came. I need you to write something down for me."

MacTavish looked absolutely confused by such an odd request. Regardless, he walked over to the desk and produced a paper and pen. "Go ahead."

As much as Price wished he could be anywhere other than here, he remained rooted in place and watched Shepherd straighten from his leaned position like a mountain lion on the prowl.

"Note as follows; Package Quebec to Site Hotel India Zero Five."

Both Captains gave him bemused looks. It sounded like something he just pulled out of his ass. Probably did. Regardless, Soap wrote it down for him and passed him the paper. Shepherd accepted it and eyed the print, his lip gave a small twitch before settling back to a smile.

"Thank you, MacTavish," the General said far more nicely than normal. As he lowered his hand and paper, Price managed to get a peek at the words.

The handwriting was the same. Small, even print...

"I've got a few calls to make, I'll be back," Shepherd walked out, leaving the two standing in the office alone. Price released a sigh of relief after the commander's footsteps faded down the hall.

MacTavish knitted his brows as he replaced the pen back into the glass. "What was all that about?"

"He thought we were getting extra help with papers," Price explained, going ahead and detailing the exchange up until he'd shown up. "Apparently you actually _did_ decide to fix your handwriting."

The younger's face went pale. "Yeah, I'm trying to. Ghost's been on my arse about it."

Price grinned ear to ear. "We really must've thrown him for a loop. I doubt he'll be able to figure when we're honest or not."

"Wouldn't surprise me."

The smile vanished, and Price returned to his normally stern demeanor. "Your antics are getting harder to cover."

Soap raised a brow. The most he supplied was a cautious "Oh?"

"Come on, lad. I'm not senile yet," Price deadpanned. "Shepherd nearly kicked over your stash of bottles just now, and don't think I never notice when you smell like a bar or nursing a hangover. This isn't healthy." It wasn't just him of course, Ghost too. It was almost like the two of them seemed to encourage each other to drink far more frequently than anyone should.

MacTavish didn't look away from him, but he did cringe with guilt. "So I'm an alcoholic... What would you have me do?"

It should have been an easy answer. The professional in him wanted to demand that he get rid of his drinks, take it off base if he felt the urge. The concerned authority figure, however, couldn't get past the possibility of his charge getting hammered somewhere away from the safety that the base provided and getting into trouble. "I wouldn't have a problem if you showed some restraint. Can you do that or do I need to stage a full on intervention here?"

A heavy pause followed as they both stared each other down. If this was going to become a silent game of will, Price wouldn't let up. Soap knew that. At last, the younger rubbed at the back of his neck, something his superior came to recognize some time ago as a sign of defeat from him. "Fine. I'll take a break from it."

"Thank you..." Price pushed at his hat. "Besides... wouldn't it be nice to spend time with Ghost sober?"

Soap's stance stiffened. "Price...? What are you getting at?"

"You know what I'm getting at. I don't have any intentions to get involved in that side of your business so long as the two of you are able to keep it separate from your jobs. Honestly, I think it'd do you some good." Of course, it would have been better if he'd found someone off base with far less complicated a history who could just listen and help take the edge off.

Where Price expected either sharp denials or maybe even an attempt to dodge around the issue, Soap gawked at him for an uncomfortably long span of time before he blinked (how he could go so long without was a mystery) and laughed a little. His fingers worked through his mohawk as he turned away. "It's really alright? I can want this?"

According to regulations, no. But when had Price ever been a hard enforcer of regulations?


	14. Walking on Your Hands

Routine had always been something that Ghost easily conformed to, it kept him sane and grounded. January and half of February came and went after they arrived at Brook Line, lost to repair work and then the more intensive schedule they needed to maintain here. No big operations in the works, just intelligence gathering. For a little while, he and MacTavish spent their nights working late over drinks, but the Captain put an end to it, saying he needed to cut back on the drinking for a while. Ghost didn't argue with him.

They were having a smoke when the younger man told him, "I'm getting shipped out to Russia in seven hours."

Ghost's cigarette drooped between his hard pressed lips. "Why's that?"

"Eh... intel collecting, nothing all that exciting," he answered dismissively. MacTavish's eyes remained fixed in the distance, reflecting the blue patches in the sky like a frosty mirror. A plume of smoke rushed from his nose. "Just me and Chrono spying on the Ultranationalists' inner circle."

"I hope your Russian's better than your Ukrainian," Ghost quipped. From what he saw, his CO seemed to have an understanding of Cyrillic, though he couldn't be sure if this extended to a full language.

With a sigh, he nodded. "Aye. It's a big part of why I'm going."

Ghost took one last puff off his cigarette and then discarded it. He toyed with the words in his head, the tone not quite matching up with the disinterested air that MacTavish was trying to give off. "Something on your mind, mate?"

MacTavish finally peeled his attention away from the invisible point in the treeline. "Apparently the Ultranationalists have the civil war just about wrapped up. It's frustrating, you know?"

"That after all the blood, sweat, and tears shit's still a mess? I know. Sometimes you just have to think of it as an exercise in futility." He tugged his balaclava up a little on his neck to help the chill on his skin. "That's not what's bothering you though."

Just like Ghost had, MacTavish snuffed out his cigarette and then kicked at the asphalt, causing a couple of pebbles caught in the sole of his boot to dislodge and skitter away. "Can we go somewhere less busy," he requested.

"You're antsy, aren't you," Ghost noted, stepping in beside him. "It's a lot quieter around Hangar 3." They hadn't exactly found a use for the hangar bay yet. Where as 1 was a shooting range, 2 stored a number of vehicles, and 4 became storage, 3 seemed like it'd been used for at least fifteen different things by the time the base had been shut down before. It was extra sheltered space. Its lack of purpose also meant few people bothered spending time there, on or off duty. As they turned towards the hangar's far side, Ghost felt a hand grab his. "... Captain?"

The gloved hand radiated with heat, heat that made the rest of him feel chilled by comparison. "We're sober this time." When MacTavish spoke, he sounded confident, yet the squeeze of his fingers betrayed him.

"I was starting to think you forgot about that," Ghost replied, surprisingly calm. He'd been waiting so long for some indication what their status was there, but he didn't dare ask. Asking was awkward. To have an answer at last put his worries to rest.

"I told you I'm a numpty," was the other's response as he stepped in and pressed his lips against his. The scent of tobacco was heavy on his breath, and if Ghost hadn't just been smoking too then he probably would have minded the ashy taste. Instead it was familiar and strangely comforting to him. Without so much as a second thought, Ghost gripped at MacTavish's coat sleeve and pressed himself into the kiss. He couldn't be sure if the pleased hum was one of his own or from the other man.

They shared a few seconds of bliss before they stopped, lingering very close to each other. As much as Ghost was tempted to offer up a snarky remark about how it'd taken so long for this to come up again, he couldn't find the words to express that. Silence was broken by the impact of Ghost's back to the side of the hangar. The Captain leaned into him for a much more heated kiss that he was happy to reciprocate. His fingers tangled into MacTavish's mohawk, gripping his hair as he fought for some control. Excited by this sudden change, he almost managed to skip the fact that this wasn't at all private enough for their behavior.

Ghost nipped at MacTavish's lip and tugged his head back somewhat. He rasped out a sharp, "There's gotta be a better place for this."

With an indignant grunt, MacTavish tell him go. "There's my quarters, if you care to go that far."

Distance didn't sound all that appealing. It was either that or try their luck at the nearest supply closet, not that doing anything with a broomstick poking at his ass sounded like a great alternative. "It'll work."

If it wasn't already a chore to move, they also needed to act like they weren't just all over each other and about to be again in two minutes. What was deemed a natural distance (about a half a meter) was placed between them. Close, not too close. Not touching. The walk did help clear up Ghost's head so he could work out a game plan. He quietly plotted his course of action starting with that door closing.

Once in the solitude of the Captain's quarters, Ghost grabbed him by the shirt front and tugged him from the entry way, quick to take command of the situation. "Now where were we?"

MacTavish gripped the back of Ghost's neck, bringing him in for a short, teasing kiss. "With you under me." He pulled off Ghost's sunglasses and set them aside.

"Wanna bet?" Ghost challenged. His eyes narrowed slightly with the removal of the tinted lenses.

If there was a response that the Lieutenant had been expecting, it was forgotten the moment his back hit the nearest wall and lips were dragging along his jaw. Ghost gasped as teeth grazed over his adam's apple. Pride demanded that he put up more of a fight, so he jumped to the next best thing he could think of and reached around to grab his ass. It only seemed to encourage his Captain.

Jackets were first to go. Too much cloth. With better access, MacTavish untucked Ghost's shirt and slipped his hand underneath. His warm fingertips traced each muscle they came across, a sensation that proved plenty enjoyable to Ghost. As he continued to kiss him, MacTavish pressed his thigh against Ghost's crotch, making it increasingly hard for the Lieutenant to hold back the sounds that built in his windpipe. The hand paused and came to trace a particularly long and deep scar in his side.

Ghost slapped his hand over MacTavish's and moved it to his chest with a breathless, "Don't worry about that..." Before his Captain could question him, he took the chance to flip their positions. With his CO pressed to the wall, he smothered him and reached down to feel the growing bulge there. He chuckled and leaned in close to his ear. "Look at you, rearing to go."

MacTavish groaned at the contact. "Please... you've been hard since we started."

"Watch what you say, Captain," Ghost warned, giving him a squeeze. The pressure caused MacTavish to knock his head back against the wall. Taking this as an encouraging sign, Ghost undid his fly and reached into his pants to get a better feel of him. As he rubbed his thumb along the shaft, MacTavish's composure dwindled more and more. "Sensitive, aren't we?"

Heated with arousal and likely embarrassment, MacTavish dug his nails into Ghost's chest, the sting it brought provided a rush of exhilaration. "Would you just shut up?"

For once, Ghost decided to humor him and not retort. Instead, he flashed him a smirk and decided on his next move. No need to scare off the other man, who he doubted was totally comfortable with his sexuality yet. He didn't expect him to have lube at this point anyways. Without missing a beat, he dropped to his knees and dragged MacTavish's pants down with him.

That earned him the man's undivided attention. Ghost pulled his cock free from his underwear and took his time teasing him further. The littlest of things elicited a sound from the younger man, made him tremble. Calm as he could possibly be in the situation, Ghost flicked his tongue over the tip, then took it into his mouth. He didn't know why he expected an awful taste, but it made for a pleasant surprise to find that MacTavish was simply clean. No sweaty odor to distract him while he worked. Fitting for someone named 'Soap'. Each motion of his lips was slow and calculated as he tested what prompted what response. The only thing that made him actually pause was when he felt hands run through his hair. Ghost breathed heavily and glanced up to find himself staring at the absolutely trusting look in MacTavish's eyes. _He's too innocent._ Ghost took more of him in and picked up his pace.

Between his rolling tongue and tight hold, he managed to work MacTavish to the edge, and he could feel it. If the younger didn't have the wall to lean against, Ghost doubted that he'd still be upright. Muscles twitched beneath the hand he kept pressed to his thigh. As tempting as it was to finish him just to see the look on his face, his own dick was aching for attention. Ghost released him from his mouth and stood up. "Don't think I'm done with you."

MacTavish nodded. "Any reason you're good at that?"

Ghost rolled his eyes and got out his own dick. "Don't think too hard on it." He came in close and wrapped his hand around both their lengths to get them both off.

"Ah, shite..." MacTavish clutched at Ghost's back. Ghost felt the man's heart rapidly drumming against his chest. "Ghost, I'm gonna-" He cut himself off with a hardly contained groan as he buried his face into the other's shoulder. Warm jizz tickled against Ghost's knuckles, and heavy panting heated his chest.

Ghost gave two seconds pause for him before resuming his long strokes, now a race to finish himself off. With the continued stimulation, MacTavish shook and gave a strangled whine. At this point, he was just barely hanging on for the ride. His fingernails dug into Ghost's back, groaning out profanities under his breath. Ghost felt him practically claw him between his shoulder blades, which pushed him over the edge. He pretty much sandwiched him to the wall, hand still wrapped around their dicks, while they both stood breathless and spent.

MacTavish mumbled something inaudible into Ghost's shoulder before finally picking his head up enough to rest his chin there. "What's this even count as?"

"Mm?" Ghost felt his pants slide down a little further before finally falling around his ankles with a little clatter from the belt buckle. He'd have to deal with that. Later. Of course. "It's not gay unless you finish inside."

With a bark of laughter, the Captain cuddled into him. "Pretty sure it's gay, Ghost."

" _Now_ it is with all your snuggling," Ghost pointed out. Despite this, he didn't move to separate himself from him. Too warm and comforting. "You want to be a dear and do clean up?"

"Aye... Think I left a box of tissues on the desk."

-()-()-()-

If GSMEAC didn't sound like someone hacking up a lung, it would've been a whole hell of a lot less memorable. While MacTavish sat in the chopper headed to Russia, he ran over each point in his head, further cementing the already ingrained information in his brain.  
Ground: _Central Moscow. Civilians were a concern._  
Situation: _New intelligence needed on the Ultranationalist Inner Circle. Spend the next week observing activity and sending it back._  
Mission: _See Situation..._  
Execution: _Meet up with Loyalist operative outside the city and set up base of operations close to Kremlin. No attention can be drawn to their presence. Talk as little as possible in public. If compromised, lose enemy first and then escape the city._  
Administration and Logistics: _Alternate between six hour watches, providing each a chance to rest. Concealable weapons only, comms, laptops, listening devices, spotting scopes, kevlar vests, and civilian clothing._  
Command and Signals: _TF 141 Command, Firebird One-Three..._

"Foxden, this is Firebird One-Three, we're entering Russian air space," Hurricane announced from the cockpit.

" _Copy, Firebird One-Three._ "

A knot formed in the base of MacTavish's stomach. This was it. It'd be his first time back in Russia since the Atlay Mountains - since being flung by an oil tanker explosion and that crumby Russian hospital. That destroyed bridge remained etched in his brain; every pool of blood on it, every dead comrade. He hadn't voiced his apprehension about returning to this fractured nation, nor was he about to any time soon. It'd been over half a year ago now. The wounds were cavernous scars, and he'd long gotten back his strength and full range of motion. Yet...

 _That's what PTSD does._

The Captain chased away the thought, gripping his assault rifle a little tighter. With deliberately slow breaths, he repeated the mission parameters in his head once again.

-()-()-()-

Six hours ago...

"You think you can handle this, Soap?"

The concern that lit Price's face should have been more upsetting than it actually was. Shepherd had decided that MacTavish would act as field commander for this assignment. Doc had raised concerns about Price's shoulder, which ended up forcing the older Captain to take on an over-watch role. Maybe that was what bothered Price. "I've got this."

On top of the excuse that Price wasn't physically fit, it also provided a unique opportunity to place authority in MacTavish's hands. This was as much a test as it was a learning experience for him. It'd be the first time he'd lead a mission in the field. No longer just a follower.

"Don't get cocky now," Price warned. "First time taking command's always the hardest."

MacTavish flashed him one of his winning smiles, hoping to mask his own unease about the whole arrangement. Could he really rely on his own leadership skills? Crane's comment on his age had opened a whole well of doubts in himself. "I'm not getting cocky, sir, trust me."

Price reached into his holster and set down a pistol on the table, the very same M1911 that he'd carried through the entirety of the seven day war that dropped Irman Zakheav. To the questioning look his XO gave him, the Captain said simply, "Just for luck."

Since when did they ever believe in something as unpredictable as luck. "Bit of a funny talisman, don't you think?"

"If you were expecting a bloody rabbit's foot, then I don't know what to tell you," Price responded with a shrug. "Besides, that at least will shoot someone in a pinch."

MacTavish checked the pistol, making sure it had ammo and was in good enough shape. Despite the scratches and chips in the metal from the action it'd seen, it was kept remarkably clean. Price must've maintained this sidearm religiously. "I feel almost weird taking your gun."

With a snort, Price crossed his arms. "Don't. That thing's been with me since Afghanistan. It's about time I let someone else hang onto it for a bit."

* * *

A/N: I'm sorry it's been a long time without any updates. The arc that follows turned out to be difficult for me to write, so I ended up withholding these chapters. Updates will be slow, of course, but I plan to reread everything up to this point and continue the story, maybe replay the games too so I can refresh the characters' voices in my head.

Anyhow, I hope y'all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hopefully 2020 will bring some actual progress with this fic.


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